THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 

IRVINE 


FROM  THE  LIBRARY  OF 
R.  BENNETT  WEAVER 


9 


LITERARY    LIVES 

EDITED    BY 

W.    ROBERTSON    NICOLL 


HENRIK   IBSEN 


LITERARY  LIVES 

Edited  by  W.  Robertson  Nicoll,  LL.D. 


HENRIK  IBSEN.    By  Edmund  Gosse. 
MATTHEW  ARNOLD.    By  G.  W.  E.  Russell. 
CARDINAL  NEWMAN.    By  William  Barry,  D.D. 
JOHN  BUNYAN.    By  W.  Hale  White. 
COVENTRY  PATMORE.    By  Edmund  Gosse. 
ERNEST  RENAN.    By  William  Barry,  D.D. 
CHARLOTTE  BRONTE.    By  Clement  K.  Shorter. 
SIR  WALTER  SCOTT.    By  Andrew  Lang. 

IN    PREPARATION 

GOETHE.    By  Edward  Dowden. 


Each  Volume,  Illustrated,  $1.00  net.  Postage  to  cts. 


O 

Literarp  Litoe* 


HENRIK  IBSEN 


BY 

EDMUND    GOSSE 


ILLUSTRATED 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES    SCRIBNER'S   SONS 
1908 


COPYRIGHT  1907  BY 
CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER   I 

CHILDHOOD  AND  YOUTH 


CHAPTER   II 
EARLY  INFLUENCES 25 

CHAPTER   III 
LIFE  IN  BERGEN  (1852-57) 51 

CHAPTER   IV 
THE  SATIRES  (1857-67) 78 

CHAPTER   V 
1868-75 ri° 

CHAPTER   VI 
1875-82 .     .      134 


vi  CONTENTS 

PAGE 

CHAPTER   VII 
1883-91 156 

CHAPTER   VIII 
LAST  YEARS 179 

CHAPTER   IX 
PERSONAL  CHARACTERISTICS 211 

CHAPTER   X 
INTELLECTUAL  CHARACTERISTICS 233 


FACING 
PAGE 


LIST  OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 

Henrik  Ibsen Frontispu 

Ibsen  in  1868 32 

Ibsen  in  Dresden,  October,  1873 64 

From  a  drawing  by  Gustav  Laerum 88 

Facsimile  of  Ibsen's  Handwriting 116 

Ibsen.     From  the  painting  by  Eilif  Petersen       .     .  190 

Bust  of  Ibsen,  about  1865 214 


PREFACE 

NUMEROUS  and  varied  as  have  been  the  anal- 
yses of  Ibsen's  works  published,  in  all  languages, 
since  the  completion  of  his  writings,  there  exists 
no  biographical  study  which  brings  together,  on 
a  general  plan,  what  has  been  recorded  of  his 
adventures  as  an  author.  Hitherto  the  only  ac- 
cepted Life  of  Ibsen  has  been  Et  literczrt  Livs- 
billede,  published  in  1888  by  Henrik  Jaeger;  of 
this  an  English  translation  was  issued  in  1890. 
Henrik  Jaeger  (who  must  not  be  confounded  with 
the  novelist,  Hans  Henrik  Jaeger)  was  a  lecturer 
and  dramatic  critic,  residing  near  Bergen,  whose 
book  would  possess  little  value  had  he  not  suc- 
ceeded in  persuading  Ibsen  to  give  him  a  good  deal 
of  valuable  information  respecting  his  early  life 
in  that  city.  In  its  own  day,  principally  on  this 
account,  Jaeger's  volume  was  useful,  supplying 
a  large  number  of  facts  which  were  new  to  the 
public.  But  the  advance  of  Ibsen's  activity,  and 
the  increase  of  knowledge  since  his  death,  have 
so  much  extended  and  modified  the  poet's  his- 
tory that  Et  literart  Livsbillede  has  become  ob- 
solete. 


x  PREFACE 

The  principal  authorities  of  which  I  have  made 
use  in  the  following  pages  are  the  minute  bibli- 
ographical Oplysninger  of  J.  B.  Halvorsen,  mar- 
vels of  ingenious  labor,  continued  after  Hal- 
vorsen's  death  by  Sten  Konow  (1901);  the  Letters 
of  Hennk  Ibsen,  published  in  two  volumes,  by 
H.  Koht  and  J.  Elias,  in  1904,  and  now  issued  in 
an  English  translation  (Hodder  &  Stoughton); 
the  recollections  and  notes  of  various  friends,  pub- 
lished in  the  periodicals  of  Scandinavia  and 
Germany  after  his  death;  T.  Blanc's  Et  Bidrag 
til  den  Ibsenskte  Digtnings  Scenehistorie  (1906); 
and,  most  of  all,  the  invaluable  Samliv  med  Ibsen 
(1906)  of  Johan  Paulsen.  This  last-mentioned 
writer  aspires,  in  measure,  to  be  Ibsen's  Boswell, 
and  his  book  is  a  series  of  chapters  reminiscent 
of  the  dramatist's  talk  and  manners,  chiefly  dur- 
ing those  central  years  of  his  life  which  he  spent 
in  Germany.  It  is  a  trivial,  naive  and  rather 
thin  production,  but  it  has  something  of  the  true 
Boswellian  touch,  and  builds  up  before  us  a  life- 
like portrait. 

From  the  materials,  too,  collected  for  many 
years  past  by  Mr.  William  Archer,  I  have  received 
important  help.  Indeed,  of  Mr.  Archer  it  is 
difficult  for  an  English  student  of  Ibsen  to  speak 
with  moderation.  It  is  true  that  thirty-six  years 
ago  some  of  Ibsen's  early  metrical  writings  fell 


PREFACE  xi 

into  the  hands  of  the  writer  of  this  little  volume, 
and  that  I  had  the  privilege,  in  consequence,  of 
being  the  first  person  to  introduce  Ibsen's  name 
to  the  British  public.  Nor  will  I  pretend  for  a 
moment  that  it  is  not  a  gratification  to  me,  after 
so  many  years  and  after  such  surprising  develop- 
ments, to  know  that  this  was  the  fact.  But,  save 
for  this  accident  of  time,  it  was  Mr.  Archer  and 
no  other  who  was  really  the  introducer  of  Ibsen 
to  English  readers.  For  a  quarter  of  a  century 
he  was  the  protagonist  in  the  fight  against  mis- 
construction and  stupidity;  with  wonderful  cour- 
age, with  not  less  wonderful  good  temper  and 
persistency,  he  insisted  on  making  the  true  Ibsen 
take  the  place  of  the  false,  and  on  securing  for 
him  the  recognition  due  to  his  genius.  Mr. 
William  Archer  has  his  reward;  his  own  name  is 
permanently  attached  to  the  intelligent  apprecia- 
tion of  the  Norwegian  playwright  in  England  and 
America. 

In  these  pages,  where  the  space  at  my  disposal 
was  so  small,  I  have  not  been  willing  to  waste  it 
by  repeating  the  plots  of  any  of  those  plays  of 
Ibsen  which  are  open  to  the  English  reader.  It 
would  please  me  best  if  this  book  might  be  read 
in  connection  with  the  final  edition  of  Ibsen  s 
Complete  Dramatic  Works,  now  being  prepared 
by  Mr.  Archer  in  eleven  volumes  (W.  Heine- 


xii  PREFACE 

mann,  1907).  If  we  may  judge  of  the  whole  work 
by  those  volumes  of  it  which  have  already  ap- 
peared, I  have  little  hesitation  in  saying  that  no 
other  foreign  author  of  the  second  half  of  the 
nineteenth  century  has  been  so  ably  and  exhaust- 
ively edited  in  English  as  Ibsen  has  been  in  this 
instance. 

The  reader  who  knows  the  Dano-Norwegian 
language  may  further  be  recommended  to  the 
study  of  Carl  Naerup's  Norsk  Litter aturhi stories 
siste  Tidsrum  (1905),  a  critical  history  of  Nor- 
wegian literature  since  1890,  which  is  invaluable 
in  giving  a  notion  of  the  effect  of  modern  ideas  on 
the  very  numerous  younger  writers  of  Norway, 
scarcely  one  of  whom  has  not  been  influenced  in 
one  direction  or  another  by  the  tyranny  of  Ibsen's 
personal  genius.  What  has  been  written  about 
Ibsen  in  England  and  France  has  often  missed 
something  of  its  historical  value  by  not  taking 
into  consideration  that  movement  of  intellectual 
life  in  Norway  which  has  surrounded  him  and 
which  he  has  stimulated.  Perhaps  I  may  be 
allowed  to  say  of  my  little  book  that  this  side  of 
the  subject  has  been  particularly  borne  in  mind 
in  the  course  of  its  composition. 

E.  G. 

KLOBENSTEIN. 


CHAPTER  I 
CHILDHOOD  AND  YOUTH 

THE  parentage  of  the  poet  has  been  traced  back 
to  a  certain  Danish  skipper,  Peter  Ibsen,  who,  in  the 
beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century,  made  his  way 
over  from  Stege,  the  capital  of  the  island  of  Moen, 
and  became  a  citizen  of  Bergen.  From  that  time 
forth  the  men  of  the  family,  all  following  the  sea 
in  their  youth,  jovial  men  of  a  humorous  disposi- 
tion, continued  to  haunt  the  coasts  of  Norway, 
marrying  sinister  and  taciturn  wives,  who,  by  the 
way,  were  always,  it  would  seem,  Danes  or  Ger- 
mans or  Scotswomen,  so  that  positively  the  poet 
had,  after  a  hundred  years  and  more  of  Nor- 
wegian habitation,  not  one  drop  of  pure  Norse 
blood  to  inherit  from  his  parents.  His  grand- 
fa  ther,Henrik,  was  wrecked  in  1798  in  his  own  ship, 
which  went  down  with  all  souls  lost  on  Hesnaes, 
near  Grimstad;  this  reef  is  the  scene  of  Ibsen's 
animated  poem  ofTerje  Viken.  His  father,  Knud, 
who  was  born  in  1797,  married  in  1825  a  German, 
Marichen  Cornelia  Martie  Altenburg,  of  the  same 
town  of  Skien;  she  was  one  year  his  senior,  and  the 


2  IBSEN 

daughter  of  a  merchant.  It  was  in  1771  that  the 
Ibsens,  leaving  Bergen,  had  settled  in  Skien, 
which  was,  and  still  is,  an  important  centre  of  the 
timber  and  shipping  trades  on  the  south-east  shore 
of  the  country. 

It  may  be  roughly  said  that  Skien,  in  the  Danish 
days,  was  a  sort  of  Poole  or  Dartmouth,  existing 
solely  for  purposes  of  marine  merchandise,  and 
depending  for  prosperity,  and  life  iself,  on  the 
sea.  Much  of  a  wire-drawn  ingenuity  has  been 
conjectured  about  the  probable  strains  of  hered- 
ity which  met  in  Ibsen.  It  is  not  necessary  to  do 
more  than  to  recognize  the  slight  but  obstinate 
exoticism,  which  kept  all  his  forbears  more  or  less 
foreigners  still  in  their  Norwegian  home;  and  to 
insist  on  the  mixture  of  adventurousness  and 
plain  common  sense  which  marked  their  move- 
ments by  sea  and  shore.  The  stock  was  intensely 
provincial,  intensely  unambitious;  it  would  be 
difficult  to  find  anywhere  a  specimen  of  the  lower 
middle  class  more  consistent  than  the  Ibsens  had 
been  in  preserving  their  respectable  dead  level. 
Even  in  that  inability  to  resist  the  call  of  the  sea, 
generation  after  generation,  if  there  was  a  little  of 
the  dare-devil  there  was  still  more  of  the  conven- 
tional citizen.  It  is,  in  fact,  a  vain  attempt  to  de- 
tect elements  of  his  ancestors  in  the  extremely 
startling  and  unprecedented  son  who  was  born  to 


CHILDHOOD  AND  YOUTH  3 

Knud  and  Marichen  Ibsen  two  years  and  three 
months  after  their  marriage. 

This  son,  who  was  baptized  Henrik  Johan,  al- 
though he  never  used  the  second  name,  was  born 
in  a  large  edifice  known  as  the  Stockmann  House, 
in  the  centre  of  the  town  of  Skien,  on  March  20, 
1828.  The  house  stood  on  one  side  of  a  large, 
open  square;  the  town  pillory  was  at  the  right  of 
it,  and  the  mad-house,  the  lock-up  and  other 
amiable  'urban  institutions  to  the  left;  in  front  was 
the  Latin  school  and  the  grammar  school,  while 
the  church  occupied  the  middle  of  the  square. 
Over  this  stern  prospect  the  tourist  can  no  longer 
sentimentalize,  for  the  whole  of  this  part  of  Skien 
was  burned  down  in  1886,  to  the  poet's  unbridled 
satisfaction.  "The  inhabitants  of  Skien,"  he  said 
with  grim  humor,  "were  quite  unworthy  to  possess 
my  birthplace." 

He  declared  that  the  harsh  elements  of  land- 
scape, mentioned  above,  were  those  which  earliest 
captivated  his  infant  attention,  and  he  added  that 
the  square  space,  with  the  church  in  the  midst  of 
it,  was  filled  all  day  long  with  the  dull  and  droning 
sound  of  many  waterfalls,  while  from  dawn  to  dusk 
this  drone  of  waters  was  constantly  cut  through  by 
a  sound  that  was  like  the  sharp  screaming  and 
moaning  of  women.  This  was  caused  by  hundreds 
of  saws  at  work  beside  the  waterfalls,  taking  ad- 


4  IBSEN 

vantage  of  that  force.  "Afterwards,  when  I  read 
about  the  guillotine,  I  always  thought  of  those 
saws,"  said  the  poet,  whose  earliest  flight  of  fancy 
seems  to  have  been  this  association  of  woman- 
hood with  the  shriek  of  the  sawmill. 

In  1888,  just  before  his  sixtieth  birthday,  Ibsen 
wrote  out  for  Henrik  Jaeger  certain  autobiograph- 
ical recollections  of  his  childhood.  It  is  from 
these  that  the  striking  phrase  about  the  scream  of 
the  saws  is  taken,  and  that  is  perhaps  the  most 
telling  of  these  infant  memories,  many  of  which 
are  slight  and  naive.  It  is  interesting,  however, 
to  find  that  his  earliest  impressions  of  life  at  home 
were  of  an  optimistic  character.  "Skien,"  he 
says,  "in  my  young  days,  was  an  exceedingly 
lively  and  sociable  place,  quite  unlike  what  it 
afterwards  became.  Several  highly  cultivated  and 
wealthy  families  lived  in  the  town  itself  or  close 
by  on  their  estates.  Most  of  these  families  were 
more  or  less  closely  related,  and  dances,  dinners 
and  music  parties  followed  each  other,  winter  and 
summer,  in  almost  unbroken  sequence.  Many 
travellers,  too,  passed  through  the  town,  and,  as 
there  were  as  yet  no  regular  inns,  they  lodged  with 
friends  or  connections.  We  almost  always  had 
guests  in  our  large,  roomy  house,  especially  at 
Christmas  and  Fair-time,  when  the  house  was  full, 
and  we  kept  open  table  from  morning  till  night." 


CHILDHOOD  AND  YOUTH  5 

The  mind  reverts  to  the  majestic  old  wooden  man- 
sions which  play  so  prominent  a  part  in  Thomas 
Krag's  novels,  or  to  the  house  of  Mrs.  Solness' 
parents,  the  burning  down  of  which  started  the 
Master-Builder's  fortunes.  Most  of  these  grand 
old  timber  houses  in  Norway  have  indeed,  by 
this  time,  been  so  burned  down. 

We  may  speculate  on  what  the  effect  of  this 
genial  open-handedness  might  have  been,  had  it 
lasted,  on  the  genius  of  the  poet.  But  fortune 
had  harsher  views  of  what  befitted  the  training  of 
so  acrid  a  nature.  When  Ibsen  was  eight  years  of 
age,  his  father's  business  was  found  to  be  in  such 
disorder  that  everything  had  to  be  sold  to  meet 
his  creditors.  The  only  piece  of  property  left 
when  this  process  had  been  gone  through  was  a 
little  broken-down  farmhouse  called  Venstob,  in 
the  outskirts  of  Skien.  Ibsen  afterwards  stated 
that  those  who  had  taken  most  advantage  of  his 
parents'  hospitality  in  their  prosperous  days  were 
precisely  those  who  now  most  markedly  turned 
the  cold  shoulder  on  them.  It  is  likely  enough 
that  this  may  have  been  the  case,  but  one  sees 
how  inevitably  Ibsen  would,  in  after  years,  be  con- 
vinced that  it  was.  He  believed  himself  to  have 
been,  personally,  much  mortified  and  humiliated 
in  childhood  by  the  change  in  the  family  status. 
Already,  by  all  accounts,  he  had  begun  to  live  a 


6  IBSEN 

life  of  moral  isolation.  His  excellent  sister  long 
afterwards  described  him  as  an  unsociable  child, 
never  a  pleasant  companion,  and  out  of  sympathy 
with  all  the  rest  of  the  family. 

We  recollect,  in  The  Wild  Duck,  the  garret 
which  was  the  domain  of  Hedvig  and  of  that 
symbolic  bird.  At  Venstob,  the  infant  Ibsen 
possessed  a  like  retreat,  a  little  room  near  the 
back  entrance,  which  was  sacred  to  him  and  into 
the  fastness  of  which  he  was  accustomed  to  bolt 
himself.  Here  were  some  dreary  old  books, 
among  others  Harrison's  folio  History  of  the  City 
of  London,  as  well  as  a  paint-box,  an  hour-glass, 
an  extinct  eight-day  clock,  properties  which  were 
faithfully  introduced,  half  a  century  later,  into 
The  Wild  Duck.  His  sister  says  that  the  only  out- 
door amusement  he  cared  for  as  a  boy  was  build- 
ing, and  she  describes  the  prolonged  construction 
of  a  castle,  in  the  spirit  of  The  M aster-Builder. 

Very  soon  he  began  to  go  to  school,  but  to 
neither  of  the  public  institutions  in  the  town. 
He  attended  what  is  described  as  a  "small  middle- 
class  school,"  kept  by  a  man  called  Johan  Hansen, 
who  was  the  only  person  connected  with  his  child- 
hood, except  his  sister,  for  whom  the  poet  retained 
in  after  life  any  agreeable  sentiment.  "  Johan 
Hansen,"  he  says,  "had  a  mild,  amiable  temper, 
like  that  of  a  child,"  and  when  he  died,  in  1865, 


CHILDHOOD  AND  YOUTH  7 

Ibsen  mourned  him.  The  sexton  at  Skien,  who 
helped  in  the  lessons,  described  the  poet  afterwards 
as  "  a  quiet  boy  «with  a  pair  of  wonderful  eyes,  but 
with  no  sort  of  cleverness  except  an  unusual  gift 
for  drawing."  Hansen  taught  Ibsen  Latin  and 
theology,  gently,  perseveringly,  without  any  strik- 
ing results;  that  the  pupil  afterwards  boasted  of 
having  successfully  perused  Phaedrus  in  the  orig- 
inal is  in  itself  significant.  So  little  was  talent 
expected  from  him  that  when,  at  the  age  of  about 
fifteen,  he  composed  a  rather  melodramatic  de- 
scription of  a  dream,  the  schoolmaster  looked  at 
him  gloomily,  and  said  he  must  have  copied  it 
out  of  some  book!  One  can  imagine  the  shocked 
silence  of  the  author,  "passive  at  the  nadir  of 
dismay." 

No  great  wild  swan  of  the  flocks  of  Phoebus 
ever  began  life  as  a  more  ungainly  duckling  than 
Ibsen  did.  The  ingenuity  of  biographers  has 
done  its  best  to  brighten  up  the  dreary  record  of 
his  childhood  with  anecdotes,  yet  the  sum  of 
them  all  is  but  a  dismal  story.  The  only  talent 
which  was  supposed  to  lurk  in  the  napkin  was  that 
for  painting.  A  little  while  before  he  left  school, 
he  was  found  to  have  been  working  hard  with 
water-colors.  Various  persons  have  recalled  fin- 
ished works  of  the  young  Ibsen — a  romantic  land- 
scape of  the  ironworks  at  Fossum,  a  view  from 


8  IBSEN 

the  windows  at  Venstob,  a  boy  in  peasant  dress 
seated  on  a  rock,  the  latter  described  by  a  dignitary 
of  the  church  as  "awfully  splendid,"  overmaade 
prcegtigt.  One  sees  what  kind  of  painting  this 
must  have  been,  founded  on  some  impression  of 
Fearnley  and  Tidemann,  a  far-away  following  of 
the  new  "national"  art  of  the  praiseworthy 
"patriot-painters"  of  the  school  of  Dahl. 

It  is  interesting  to  remember  that  Pope,  who  had 
considerable  intellectual  relationship  with  Ibsen, 
also  nourished  in  childhood  the  ambition  to  be  a 
painter,  and  drudged  away  at  his  easel  for  weeks 
and  months.  As  he  to  the  insipid  Jervases  and 
Knellers  whom  he  copied,  so  Ibsen  to  the  con- 
scientious romantic  artists  of  Norway's  prime. 
In  neither  case  do  we  wish  that  an  Ibsen  or  a 
Pope  should  be  secured  for  the  National  Gallery, 
but  it  is  highly  significant  that  such  earnest 
students  of  precise  excellence  in  another  art  should 
first  of  all  have  schooled  their  eyes  to  exactitude 
by  grappling  with  form  and  color. 

In  1843,  being  fifteen  years  of  age,  Ibsen  was 
confirmed  and  taken  away  from  school.  These 
events  marked  the  beginning  of  adolescence  with 
a  young  middle-class  Norwegian  of  those  days, 
for  whom  the  future  proposed  no  task  in  life  de- 
manding a  more  elaborate  education  than  the 
local  schoolmaster  could  give.  Ibsen  announced 


CHILDHOOD  AND  YOUTH  9 

his  wish  to  be  a  professional  artist,  but  that  was 
one  which  could  not  be  indulged.  Until  a  later 
date  than  this,  every  artist  in  Norway  was  forced 
to  go  abroad  for  the  necessary  technical  training: 
as  a  rule,  students  went  to  Dresden,  because  J.  C. 
Dahl  was  there;  but  many  settled  in  Diisseldorf, 
where  the  teaching  attracted  them.  In  any  case, 
the  adoption  of  a  plastic  profession  meant  a  long 
and  serious  expenditure  of  money,  together  with 
a  very  doubtful  prospect  of  ultimate  remuner- 
ation. Fearnley,  who  had  seemed  the  very  genius 
of  Norwegian  art,  had  just  (1842)  died,  having 
scarcely  begun  to  sell  his  pictures,  at  the  age  of 
forty.  It  is  not  surprising  that  Knud  Ibsen,  whose 
affairs  were  in  a  worse  condition  than  ever,  re- 
fused even  to  consider  a  course  of  life  which  would 
entail  a  heavy  and  long-continued  expense. 

Ibsen  hung  about  at  home  for  a  few  months, 
and  then,  shortly  before  his  sixteenth  birthday,  he 
was  apprenticed  to  an  apothecary  of  the  name  of 
Reimann,  at  the  little  town  of  Grimstad,  between 
Arendal  and  Christianssand,  on  the  extreme 
south-east  corner  of  the  Norwegian  coast.  This 
was  his  home  for  more  than  five  years;  here  he 
became  a  poet,  and  here  the  peculiar  color  and 
tone  of  his  temperament  were  developed.  So  far 
as  the  genius  of  a  very  great  man  is  influenced 
by  his  surroundings,  and  by  his  physical  con- 


io  IBSEN 

dition  in  those  surroundings,  it  was  the  atmos- 
phere of  Grimstad  and  of  its  drug-store  which 
moulded  the  character  of  Ibsen.  Skien  and  his 
father's  house  dropped  from  him  like  an  old  suit 
of  clothes.  He  left  his  parents,  whom  he  scarcely 
knew,  the  town  which  he  hated,  the  schoolmates 
and  schoolmasters  to  whom  he  seemed  a  surly 
dunce.  We  find  him  next,  with  an  apron  round 
his  middle  and  a  pestle  in  his  hand,  pounding 
drugs  in  a  little  apothecary's  shop  in  Grimstad. 
What  Blackwood's  so  basely  insinuated  of  Keats 

"  Back  to  the  shop,  Mr.  John,  stick  to  plasters, 
pills  and  ointment-boxes,"  inappropriate  to  the 
author  of  Endymion,  was  strictly  true  of  the  author 
of  Peer  Gynt. 

Curiosity  and  hero-worship  once  took  the  author 
of  these  lines  to  Grimstad.  It  is  a  marvellous 
object-lesson  on  the  development  of  genius.  For 
nearly  six  years  (from  1844  to  1850),  and  those 
years  the  most  important  of  all  in  the  moulding 
of  character  and  talent,  one  of  the  most  original 
and  far-reaching  imaginations  which  Europe  has 
seen  for  a  century  was  cooped  up  here  among 
ointment-boxes,  pills  and  plasters.  Grimstad  is  a 
small,  isolated,  melancholy  place,  connected  with 
nothing  at  all,  visitable  only  by  steamer.  Feature- 
less hills  surround  it,  and  it  looks  out  into  the  east 
wind,  over  a  dark  bay  dotted  with  naked  rocks. 


CHILDHOOD  AND  YOUTH          n 

No  industry,  no  objects  of  interest  in  the  vicinity, 
a  perfect  uniformity  of  little  red  houses  where 
nobody  seems  to  be  doing  anything;  in  Ibsen's 
time  there  are  said  to  have  been  about  five  hundred 
of  these  apathetic  inhabitants.  Here,  then,  for 
six  interminable  years,  one  of  the  acutest  brains 
in  Europe  had  to  interest  itself  in  fraying  ipecacu- 
anha and  mixing  black  draughts  behind  an  apoth- 
ecary's counter. 

For  several  years  nothing  is  recorded,  and  there 
was  probably  very  little  that  demanded  record,  of 
Ibsen's  life  at  Grimstad.  His  own  interesting 
notes,  it  is  obvious,  refer  only  to  the  closing  months 
of  the  period.  Ten  years  before  the  birth  of  Ib- 
sen one  of  the  greatest  poets  of  Europe  had  writ- 
ten words  which  seem  meant  to  characterize  an 
adolescence  such  as  his.  "The  imagination  of  a 
boy  is  healthy,  and  the  mature  imagination  of  a 
man  is  healthy;  but  there  is  a  space  of  life  between, 
in  which  the  soul  is  in  a  ferment,  the  character  un- 
decided, the  way  of  life  uncertain,  the  ambition 
thick-sighted;  thence  proceed  mawkishness  and  a 
thousand  bitters." 

It  is  easy  to  discover  that  Ibsen,  from  his  six- 
teenth to  his  twentieth  year,  suffered  acutely  from 
this  moral  and  intellectual  distemper.  He  was  at 
war — the  phrase  is  his  own — with  the  little  com- 
munity in  which  he  lived.  And  yet  it  seems  to 


12  IBSEN 

have  been,  in  its  tiny  way,  a  tolerant  and  even 
friendly  little  community.  It  is  difficult  for  us 
to  realize  what  life  in  a  remote  coast-town  of 
Norway  would  be  sixty  years  ago.  Connection 
with  the  capital  would  be  rare  and  difficult,  and, 
when  achieved,  the  capital  was  as  yet  little  more 
than  we  should  call  a  village.  There  would, 
perhaps,  be  a  higher  uniformity  of  education 
among  the  best  inhabitants  of  Grimstad  than  we 
are  prepared  to  suppose.  A  certain  graceful 
veneer  of  culture,  an  old-fashioned  Danish  ele- 
gance reflected  from  Copenhagen,  would  mark 
the  more  conservative  citizens,  male  and  female. 
A  fierier  generation — not  hot  enough,  however, 
to  set  the  fjord  on  flame — would  celebrate  the 
comparatively  recent  freedom  of  the  country  in 
numerous  patriotic  forms.  It  is  probable  that  a 
dark  boy  like  Ibsen  would,  on  the  whole,  prefer 
the  former  type,  but  he  would  despise  them 
both. 

He  was  poor,  excruciatingly  poor,  with  a  pov- 
erty that  excluded  all  indulgence,  beyond  the  bare 
necessities,  in  food  and  clothes  and  books.  We 
can  conceive  the  meagre  advance  of  his  position, 
first  a  mere  apprentice,  then  an  assistant,  finally 
buoyed  up  by  the  advice  of  friends  to  study 
medicine  and  pharmacy,  in  the  hope  of  being, 
some  bright  day,  himself  no  less  than  the  owner  of 


CHILDHOOD  AND  YOUTH          13 

a  drug-store.  Did  Mr.  Anstey  know  this,  or  was 
it  the  sheer  adventure  of  genius,  when  he  conr 
centrated  the  qualities  of  the  master  into  "Pill- 
Doctor  Herdal,"  compounding  "beautiful  rain- 
bow-colored powders  that  will  give  one  a  real 
grip  on  the  world "  ?  Ibsen,  it  is  allowable  to 
think,  may  sometimes  have  dreamed  of  a  pill, 
"with  arsenic  in  it,  Hilda,  and  digitalis,  too,  and 
strychnine,  and  the  best  beetle-killer,"  which 
would  decimate  the  admirable  inhabitants  of  Grim- 
stad,  strewing  the  rocks  with  their  bodies  in  their 
best  go-to-meeting  coats  and  dresses.  He  had 
in  him  that  source  of  anger,  against  which  all  argu- 
ment is  useless,  which  bubbles  up  in  the  heart  of 
a  youth  who  vaguely  feels  himself  possessed  of 
great  native  energy,  and  knows  not  how  to  stir  a 
hand  or  even  formulate  a  wish.  He  was  savage 
in  manners,  unprepossessing  in  appearance,  and, 
as  he  himself  has  told  us  with  pathetic  naivete, 
unable  to  express  the  real  gratitude  he  felt  to  the 
few  who  would  willingly  have  extended  friendship 
to  him  if  he  had  permitted  it. 

As  he  advanced  in  age,  he  does  not  seem  to 
have  progressed  in  grace.  By  the  respectable 
citizens  of  Grimstad — and  even  Grimstad  had  its 
little  inner  circle  of  impenetrable  aristocracy — he 
was  regarded  as  "not  quite  nice."  The  apothe- 
cary's assistant  was  a  bold  young  man,  who  did 


I4  IBSEN 

not  seem  to  realize  his  menial  position.  He  was 
certainly  intelligent,  and  Grimstad  would  have 
overlooked  the  pills  and  ointments  if  his  manners 
had  been  engaging,  but  he  was  rude,  truculent 
and  contradictory.  The  youthful  female  sex  is 
not  in  the  habit  of  sharing  the  prejudices  of  its 
elders  in  this  respect,  and  many  a  juvenile  Orson 
has,  in  such  conditions,  enjoyed  substantial  suc- 
cesses. But  young  Ibsen  was  not  a  favorite  even 
with  the  girls,  whom  he  alarmed  and  discon- 
certed. One  of  the  young  ladies  of  Grimstad  in 
after  years  attempted  to  describe  the  effect  which 
the  poet  made  upon  them.  They  had  none  of 
them  liked  him,  she  said,  "because" — she  hesi- 
tated for  the  word — "because  he  was  so  spectral" 
This  gives  us  just  the  flash  we  want;  it  reveals  to 
us  for  a  moment  the  distempered  youth,  almost 
incorporeal,  displayed  wandering  about  at  twilight 
and  in  lonely  places,  held  in  common  esteem  to  be 
malevolent,  and  expressing  by  gestures  rather  than 
by  words  sentiments  of  a  nature  far  from  compli- 
mentary or  agreeable. 

Thus  life  at  Grimstad  seems  to  have  proceeded 
until  Ibsen  reached  his  twenty-first  year.  In  this 
quiet  backwater  of  a  seaport  village  the  passage 
of  time  was  deliberate,  and  the  development  of 
hard-worked  apothecaries  was  slow.  Ibsen's  nat- 
ure was  not  in  any  sense  precocious,  and  even  if 


CHILDHOOD  AND  YOUTH          15 

he  had  not  languished  in  so  lost  a  corner  of  so- 
ciety, it  is  unlikely  that  he  would  have  started 
prematurely  in  life  or  literature.  The  actual 
waking  up,  when  it  came  at  last,  seems  to  have 
been  almost  an  accident.  There  had  been  some 
composing  of  verses,  now  happily  lost,  and  some 
more  significant  distribution  of  "epigrams"  and 
"caricatures"  to  the  vexation  of  various  worthy 
persons.  The  earliest  trace  of  talent  seems  to 
have  been  in  this  direction,  in  the  form  of  lampoons 
or  "characters,"  as  people  called  them  in  the 
seventeenth  century,  sarcastic  descriptions  of 
types  in  which  certain  individuals  could  be  recog- 
nized. No  doubt  if  these  could  be  recovered,  we 
should  find  them  rough  and  artless,  but  contain- 
ing germs  of  the  future  keenness  of  portraiture. 
They  were  keen  enough,  it  seems,  to  rouse  great 
resentment  in  Grimstad. 

There  is  evidence  to  show  that  the  lad  had 
docility  enough,  at  all  events,  to  look  about  for 
some  aid  in  the  composition  of  Norwegian  prose. 
We  should  know  nothing  of  it  but  for  a  passage 
in  Ibsen's  later  polemic  with  Paul  Jansenius 
Stub  of  Bergen.  In  1848  Stub  was  an  invalid 
schoolmaster,  who,  it  appears,  eked  out  his  in- 
come by  giving  instruction,  by  correspondence, 
in  style.  How  Ibsen  heard  of  him  does  not  seem 
to  be  known,  but  when,  in  1851,  Ibsen  entered, 


16  IBSEN 

with  needless  acrimony,  into  a  controversy  with 
his  previous  teacher  about  the  theatre,  Stub  com- 
plained of  his  ingratitude,  since  he  had  "taught 
the  boy  to  write.'*  Stub's  intervention  in  the  mat- 
ter, doubtless,  was  limited  to  the  correction  of  a 
few  exercises. 

Ibsen's  own  theory  was  that  his  intellect  and 
character  were  awakened  by  the  stir  of  revolution 
throughout  Europe.  The  first  political  event 
which  really  interested  him  was  the  proclamation 
of  the  French  Republic,  which  almost  coincided 
with  his  twentieth  birthday.  He  was  born  again, 
a  child  of  '48.  There  were  risings  in  Vienna,  in 
Milan,  in  Rome.  Venice  was  proclaimed  a  re- 
public, the  Pope  fled  to  Gaeta,  the  streets  of  Ber- 
lin ran  with  the  blood  of  the  populace.  The 
Magyars  rose  against  Jellalic  and  his  Croat 
troops;  the  Czechs  demanded  their  autonomy;  in 
response  to  the  revolutionary  feeling  in  Germany, 
Schleswig-Holstein  was  up  in  arms. 

Each  of  these  events,  and  others  like  them,  and 
all  occurring  in  the  rapid  months  of  that  momen- 
tous year,  smote  like  hammers  on  the  door  of 
Ibsen's  brain,  till  it  quivered  with  enthusiasm  and 
excitement.  The  old  brooding  languor  was  at 
an  end,  and  with  surprising  clearness  and  firmness 
he  saw  his  pathway  cut  out  before  him  as  a  poet 
and  as  a  man.  The  old  clouds  vanished,  and 


CHILDHOOD  AND  YOUTH          17 

though  the  social  difficulties  which  hemmed  in 
his  career  were  as  gross  as  ever,  he  himself  no 
longer  doubted  what  was  to  be  his  aim  in  life. 
The  cry  of  revolution  came  to  him,  of  revolution 
faint  indeed  and  broken,  the  voice  of  a  minority 
appealing  frantically  and  for  a  moment  against 
the  overwhelming  forces  of  a  respectable  majority, 
but  it  came  to  him  just  at  the  moment  when  his 
young  spirit  was  prepared  to  receive  it  with  faith 
and  joy.  The  effect  on  Ibsen's  character  was 
sudden  and  it  was  final: 

Then  he  stood  up,  and  trod  to  dust 
Fear  and  desire,  mistrust  and  trust, 

And  dreams  of  bitter  sleep  and  sweet, 

And  bound  for  sandals  on  his  feet 
Knowledge  and  patience  of  what  must 

And  what  things  may  be,  in  the  heat 
And  cold  of  years  that  rot  and  rust 

And  alter;  and  his  spirit's  meat 
Was  freedom,  and  his  staff  was  wrought 
Of  strength,  and  his  cloak  woven  of  thought. 

We  are  not  left  to  conjecture  on  the  subject; 
in  a  document  of  extreme  interest,  which  seems 
somehow  to  have  escaped  the  notice  of  his 
commentators,  the  preface  to  the  second  (1876) 
edition  of  Catilina,  he  has  described  what  the  in- 
fluences were  which  roused  him  out  of  the  wretch- 
edness of  Grimstad;  they  were  precisely  the 


18  IBSEN 

revolution  of  February,  the  risings  in  Hungary, 
the  first  Schleswig  war.  He  wrote  a  series  of 
sonnets,  now  apparently  lost,  to  King  Oscar, 
imploring  him  to  take  up  arms  for  the  help  of 
Denmark,  and  of  nights,  when  all  his  duties  were 
over  at  last,  and  the  shop  shut  up,  he  would  creep 
to  the  garret  where  he  slept,  and  dream  himself 
fighting  at  the  centre  of  the  world,  instead  of  lost 
on  its  extreme  circumference.  And  here  he  be- 
gan his  first  drama,  the  opening  lines  of  which, 

"I  must,  I  must;  a  voice  is  crying  to  me 
From  my  soul's  depth,  and  I  will  follow  it," 

might  be  taken  as  the  epigraph  of  Ibsen's  whole 
life's  work. 

In  one  of  his  letters  to  Georg  Brandes  he  has 
noted,  with  that  clairvoyance  which  marks  some 
of  his  utterances  about  himself,  the  "  full-blooded 
egotism"  which  developed  in  him  during  his  last 
year  of  mental  and  moral  starvation  at  Grimstad. 
Through  the  whole  series  of  his  satiric  dramas  we 
see  the  little  narrow-minded  borough,  with  its 
ridiculous  officials,  its  pinched  and  hypocritical 
social  order,  its  intolerable  laws  and  ordinances, 
modified  here  and  there,  expanded  sometimes, 
modernized  and  brought  up  to  date,  but  always 
recurrent  in  the  poet's  memory.  To  the  last,  the 
images  and  the  rebellions  which  were  burned  into 


CHILDHOOD  AND  YOUTH          19 

his  soul  at  Grimstad  were  presented  over  and  over 
again  to  his  readers. 

But  the  necessity  of  facing  the  examination  at 
Christiania  now  presented  itself.  He  was  so 
busily  engaged  in  the  shop  that  he  had,  as  he  says, 
to  steal  his  hours  for  study.  He  still  inhabited  the 
upper  room,  which  he  calls  a  garret;  it  would  not 
seem  that  the  alteration  in  his  status,  assistant 
now  and  no  longer  apprentice,  had  increased  his 
social  conveniences.  He  was  still  the  over- 
worked apothecary,  pounding  drugs  with  a  pestle 
and  mortar  from  morning  till  night.  Someone 
has  pointed  out  the  odd  circumstance  that  almost 
every  scene  in  the  drama  of  Catilina  takes  place 
in  the  dark.  This  was  the  unconscious  result  of 
the  fact  that  all  the  attention  which  the  future 
realist  could  give  to  the  story  had  to  be  given  in 
the  night  hours.  When  he  emerged  from  the  gar- 
ret, it  was  to  read  Latin  with  a  candidate  in  the- 
ology, a  Mr.  Monrad,  brother  of  the  afterwards 
famous  professor.  By  a  remarkable  chance,  the 
subject  given  by  the  University  for  examination 
was  the  Conspiracy  of  Catiline,  to  be  studied  in 
the  history  of  Sallust  and  the  oration  of  Cicero. 

No  theme  could  have  been  more  singularly 
well  fitted  to  fire  the  enthusiasm  of  Ibsen.  At 
no  time  of  his  life  a  linguist,  or  much  interested 
in  history,  it  is  probable  that  the  difficulty  of  con- 


20  IBSEN 

centrating  his  attention  on  a  Latin  text  would 
have  been  insurmountable  had  the  subject  been 
less  intimately  sympathetic  to  him.  But  he  tells 
us  that  he  had  no  sooner  perceived  the  character  of 
the  man  against  whom  these  diatribes  are  directed 
than  he  devoured  them  greedily  (jeg  slugte  disse 
sknfter).  The  opening  words  of  Sallust,  which 
every  schoolboy  has  to  read — we  can  imagine  with 
what  an  extraordinary  force  they  would  strike 
upon  the  resounding  emotion  of  such  a  youth  as 
Ibsen.  Lucius  Catllina  nobili  genere  natus,  magna 
vi  et  animi  et  corporis,  sed  ingenio  malo  pravoque 
— how  does  this  at  once  bring  up  an  image  of  the 
arch-rebel,  of  Satan  himself,  as  the  poets  have  con- 
ceived him,  how  does  it  attract,  with  its  effects  of 
energy,  intelligence  and  pride,  the  curiosity  of  one 
whose  way  of  life,  as  Keats  would  say,  is  still  un- 
decided, his  ambition  still  thick-sighted! 

It  was  Sallust's  picture  more  than  Cicero's  that 
absorbed  Ibsen.  Criticism  likes  to  trace  a  prede- 
cessor behind  every  genius,  a  Perugino  for  Raffa- 
elle,  a  Marlowe  for  Shakespeare.  If  we  seek  for 
the  master-mind  that  started  Ibsen,  it  is  not  to 
be  found  among  the  writers  of  his  age  or  of  his 
language.  The  real  master  of  Ibsen  was  Sallust. 
There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  cold  and  bitter 
strength  of  Sallust;  his  unflinching  method  of 
building  up  his  edifice  of  invective,  stone  by 


CHILDHOOD  AND  YOUTH          21 

stone;  his  close,  unidealistic,  dry  penetration  into 
character;  his  clinical  attitude,  unmoved  at  the 
death-bed  of  a  reputation;  that  all  these  qualities 
were  directly  operative  on  the  mind  and  intellect- 
ual character  of  Ibsen,  and  went  a  long  way  to 
mould  it  while  moulding  was  still  possible. 

There  is  no  evidence  to  show  that  the  oration 
of  Cicero  moved  him  nearly  so  much  as  the  narra- 
tives of  Sallust.  After  all,  the  object  of  Cicero 
was  to  crush  the  conspiracy,  but  what  Ibsen  was 
interested  in  was  the  character  of  Catiline,  and 
this  was  placed  before  him  in  a  more  thrilling  way 
by  the  austere  reserve  of  the  historian.  No 
doubt,  to  a  young  poet,  when  that  poet  was  Ibsen, 
there  would  be  something  deeply  attractive  in  the 
sombre,  archaic  style,  and  icy  violence  of  Sallust. 
How  thankful  we  ought  to  be  that  the  historian, 
with  his  long  sonorous  words — flagitiosorum  ac 
facinorosorum — did  not  make  of  our  perfervid 
apothecary  a  mere  tub-thumper  of  Corinthian 
prose! 

Ibsen  now  formed  the  two  earliest  friendships 
of  his  life.  He  had  reached  the  age  of  twenty 
without,  as  it  would  seem,  having  been  able  to 
make  his  inner  nature  audible  to  those  around 
him.  He  had  been  to  the  inhabitants  of  Grim- 
stad  a  stranger  within  their  gates,  not  speaking 
their  language;  or,  rather,  wholly  "spectral," 


22  IBSEN 

speaking  no  language  at  all,  but  indulging  in  cat- 
calls and  grimaces.  He  was  now  discovered  like 
Caliban,  and  tamed,  and  made  vocal,  by  the 
strenuous  arts  of  friendship.  One  of  those  who 
thus  interpreted  him  was  a  young  musician,  Due, 
who  held  a  post  in  the  custom-house;  the  other 
was  Ole  Schulerud  (1827-59),  wri°  deserves  a 
cordial  acknowledgment  from  every  admirer  of 
Ibsen.  He  also  was  in  the  receipt  of  custom,  and 
a  young  man  of  small  independent  means.  To 
Schulerud  and  to  Due,  Ibsen  revealed  his  poetic 
plans,  and  he  seems  to  have  found  in  them  both 
sympathizers  with  his  republican  enthusiasms  and 
transcendental  schemes  for  the  liberation  of  the 
peoples.  It  was  a  stirring  time,  in  1848,  and  all 
generous  young  blood  was  flowing  fast  in  the 
same  direction. 

Since  Ibsen's  death,  Due  has  published  a  very 
lively  paper  of  recollections  of  the  old  Grimstad 
days.  He  says : 

His  daily  schedule  admitted  few  intervals  for  rest  or  sleep. 
Yet  I  never  heard  Ibsen  complain  of  being  tired.  His  health 
was  uniformly  good.  He  must  have  had  an  exceptionally 
strong  constitution,  for  when  his  financial  conditions  com- 
pelled him  to  practice  the  most  stringent  economy,  he  tried 
to  do  without  underclothing,  and  finally  even  without  stock- 
ings. In  these  experiments  he  succeeded;  and  in  winter 
he  went  without  an  overcoat ;  yet  without  being  troubled  by 
colds  or  other  bodily  ills. 


CHILDHOOD  AND  YOUTH          23 

We  have  seen  that  Ibsen  was  so  busy  that  he 
had  to  steal  from  his  duties  the  necessary  hours 
for  study.  But  out  of  these  hours,  he  tells  us,  he 
stole  moments  for  the  writing  of  poetry,  of  the 
revolutionary  poetry  of  which  we  have  spoken, 
and  for  a  great  quantity  of  lyrics  of  a  sentimental 
and  fanciful  kind.  Due  was  the  confidant  to 
whom  he  recited  the  latter,  and  one  at  least  of 
these  early  pieces  survives,  set  to  music  by  this 
friend.  But  to  Schulerud  a  graver  secret  was 
intrusted,  no  less  than  that  in  the  night  hours  of 
1848-49  there  was  being  composed  in  the  garret 
over  the  apothecary's  shop  a  three-act  tragedy  in 
blank  verse,  on  the  conspiracy  of  Catiline.  With 
his  own  hand,  when  the  first  draft  was  completed, 
Schulerud  made  a  clean  copy  of  the  drama,  and 
in  the  autumn  of  1849  he  went  to  Christiania  with 
the  double  purpose  of  placing  Catilina  at  the 
theatre  and  securing  a  publisher  for  it.  A  letter 
(October  15,  1849)  from  Ibsen,  first  printed  in 
1904 — the  only  document  we  possess  of  this  ear- 
liest period — displays  to  a  painful  degree  the 
torturing  anxiety  with  which  the  poet  awaited 
news  of  his  play,  and,  incidentally,  exposes  his 
poverty.  With  all  Schulerud's  energy,  he  found 
it  impossible  to  gain  attention  for  Catilina  at  the 
theatre,  and  in  January,  1850,  Ibsen  received 
what  he  called  its  "death  warrant,"  but  it  was 


24  IBSEN 

presently  brought  out  as  a  volume,  under  the 
pseudonym  of  Brynjolf  Bjarme,  at  Schulerud's 
expense.  Of  Catilina  about  thirty  copies  were 
sold,  and  it  attracted  no  notice  whatever  from 
the  press. 

Meanwhile,  left  alone  in  Grimstad,  since  Due 
was  now  with  Schulerud  in  Christiania,  Ibsen  had 
been  busy  with  many  literary  projects.  He  had 
been  writing  an  abundance  of  lyrics,  he  had  begun 
a  one-act  drama  called  "The  Normans,"  after- 
wards turned  into  Kcempehojen;  he  was  planning 
a  romance,  The  Prisoner  at  Akershus  (this  was  to 
deal  with  the  story  of  Christian  Lofthus);  and 
above  all  he  was  busy  writing  a  tragedy  of  Olaf 
Trygveson.1 

One  of  his  poems  had  already  been  printed  in 
a  Christiania  newspaper.  The  call  was  over- 
whelming; he  could  endure  Grimstad  and  the 
gallipots  no  longer.  In  March,  1850,  at  the  age 
of  twenty-one,  Ibsen  stuck  a  few  dollars  in  his 
pocket  and  went  off  to  try  his  fortune  in  the 
capital. 

>  On  the  authority  of  the  Breve,  pp.  58,  59,  where  Halvdan  Koht 
prints  "Olaf  Tr."  and  "Olaf  T."  expanding  these  to  Trfygveson]. 
But  is  it  quite  certain  that  what  Ibsen  wrote  in  these  letters  was  not 
"Olaf  Li."  and  "Olaf  L.,"  and  that  the  reference  is  not  to  Olaj 
Liljekrans,  which  was  certainly  begun  at  Grimstad?  Is  there  any 
other  evidence  that  Ibsen  ever  started  an  Ola}  Trygveson  ? 


CHAPTER  II 
EARLY  INFLUENCES 

IN  middle  life  Ibsen,  who  suppressed  for  as 
long  a  time  as  he  could  most  of  his  other  juvenile 
works,  deliberately  lifted  Catilina  from  the  ob- 
livion into  which  it  had  fallen,  and  replaced  it  in 
the  series  of  his  writings.  This  is  enough  to  in- 
dicate to  us  that  he  regarded  it  as  of  relative  im- 
portance, and  imperfect  as  it  is,  and  unlike  his 
later  plays,  it  demands  some  critical  examination. 
I  do  not  know  whether  any  one  ever  happened  to 
ask  Ibsen  whether  he  had  been  aware  that  Alex- 
andre  Dumas  produced  in  Paris  a  five-act  drama 
of  Catiline  at  the  very  moment  (October,  1848) 
when  Ibsen  started  the  composition  of  his.  It 
is  quite  possible  that  the  young  Norwegian  saw 
this  fact  noted  in  a  newspaper,  and  immediately 
determined  to  try  what  he  could  make  of  the  same 
subject.  In  Dumas'  play  Catiline  is  presented 
merely  as  a  demagogue;  he  is  the  red  Flag  per- 
sonified, and  the  political  situation  in  France  is 
discussed  under  a  slight  veil  of  Roman  history. 

as 


26  IBSEN 

Catiline  is  simply  a  sort  of  Robespierre  brought 
up  to  date.  There  is  no  trace  of  all  this  in 
Ibsen. 

Oddly  enough,  though  the  paradox  is  easily 
explained,  we  find  much  more  similarity  when  we 
compare  the  Norwegian  drama  with  that  tragedy 
of  Catiline  which  Ben  Jonson  published  in  1611. 
Needless  to  state,  Ibsen  had  never  read  the  old 
English  play;  it  would  be  safe  to  lay  a  wager  that, 
when  he  died,  Ibsen  had  never  heard  or  seen  the 
name  of  Ben  Jonson.  Yet  there  is  an  odd  sort  of 
resemblance,  founded  on  the  fact  that  each  poet 
keeps  very  close  to  the  incidents  recorded  by  the 
Latins.  Neither  of  them  takes  Sallust's  present- 
ment of  the  character  of  Catiline  as  if  it  were 
gospel,  but,  while  holding  exact  touch  with  the 
narrative,  each  contrives  to  add  a  native  grandeur 
to  the  character  of  the  arch-conspirator,  such  as  his 
original  detractors  denied  him.  In  both  poems, 
Ben  Jonson's  and  Ibsen's,  Catiline  is— 

Armed  with  a  glory  high  as  his  despair. 

Another  resemblance  between  the  old  English 
and  the  modern  Norwegian  dramatist  is  that  each 
has  felt  the  solid  stuff  of  the  drama  to  require 
lightening,  and  has  attempted  to  provide  this  by 
means,  in  Ben  Jonson's  case,  of  solemn  "choruses," 
in  Ibsen's  of  lyrics.  In  the  latter  instance  the 


EARLY  INFLUENCES  27 

tragedy  ends  in  rolling  and  rhymed  verse,  little 
suited  to  the  stage. 

This  is  a  very  curious  example,  among  many 
which  might  be  brought  forward,  of  Ibsen's 
native  partiality  for  dramatic  rhyme.  In  all  his 
early  plays,  his  tendency  is  to  slip  into  the  lyrical 
mood.  This  tendency  reached  its  height  nearly 
twenty  years  later  in  Brand  and  Peer  Gynt,  and 
the  truth  about  the  austere  prose  which  he  then 
adopted  for  his  dramas  is  probably  this,  not  that 
the  lyrical  faculty  had  quitted  him,  but  that  he 
found  it  to  be  hampering  his  purely  dramatic  ex- 
pression, and  that  he  determined,  by  a  self-deny- 
ing ordinance,  to  tear  it  altogether  off  his  shoulders, 
like  an  embroidered  mantle,  which  is  in  itself  very 
ornamental,  but  which  checks  an  actor's  move- 
ments. 

The  close  of  Ibsen's  Catilina  is,  as  we  have  said, 
composed  entirely  in  rhyme,  and  the  effect  of  this 
is  curious.  It  is  as  though  the  young  poet  could 
not  restrain  the  rhythm  bubbling  up  in  him,  and 
was  obliged  to  start  running,  although  the  mo- 
ment was  plainly  one  for  walking.  Here  is  a 
fragment.  Catiline  has  stabbed  Aurelia,  and  left 
her  in  the  tent  for  dead.  But  while  he  was  solilo- 
quizing at  the  door  of  the  tent,  Fulvia  has  stabbed 
him.  He  lies  dying  at  the  foot  of  a  tree,  and  makes 
a  speech  which  ends  thus: — 


28  IBSEN 

See,  the  pathway  breaks,  divided!    I  will  wander,  dumb, 
To  the  left  hand. 

AURELIA 

(appearing,  blood-stained,  at  the  door  o]  the  tent). 
Nay!  the  right  hand!    Towards  Elysium. 

CATILINE 
(greatly  alarmed). 

O  yon  pallid  apparition,  how  it  fills  me  with  remorse. 
'Tis  herself!    Aurelia!  tell  me,  art  thou  living?  not  a  corse? 

AURELIA. 

Yes,  I  live  that  I  may  lull  thy  sea  of  sorrows,  and  may  lie 
With  my  bosom  pressed  a  moment  to  thy  bosom,  and  then 
die. 

CATILINE 
(bewildered). 
What?  thou  livest? 

AURELIA. 

Death's  pale  herald  o'er  my  senses  threw  a  pall, 
But  my  dulled  eye  tracked  thy  footsteps,  and  I  saw,  I  saw 

it  all, 

And  my  passion  a  wife's  forces  to  my  wounded  body  gave; 
Breast  to  breast,  my  Catiline,  let  us  sink  into  our  grave.1 

He  had  slipped  far  out  of  the  sobriety  of  Sallust 
when  he  floundered,  in  this  way,  in  the  deep 
waters  of  romanticism.  In  the  isolation  of  Grim- 

1  In  1875  Ibsen  practically  rewrote  the  whole  of  this  part  of  Catilina, 
without,  however,  improving  it.  Why  will  great  authors  confuse  the 
history  of  literature  by  tampering  with  their  early  texts? 


EARLY  INFLUENCES  29 

stad  he  had  but  himself  to  consult,  and  the  mind 
of  a  young  poet  who  has  not  yet  enjoyed  any 
generous  communication  with  life  is  invariably 
sentimental  and  romantic.  The  critics  of  the 
North  have  expended  a  great  deal  of  ingenuity  in 
trying  to  prove  that  Ibsen  exposed  his  own  temper- 
ament and  character  in  the  course  of  Catilina. 
No  doubt  there  is  a  great  temptation  to  indulge 
in  this  species  of  analysis,  but  it  is  amusing 
to  note  that  some  of  the  soliloquies  which  have 
been  pointed  out  as  particularly  self-revealing 
are  translated  almost  word  for  word  out  of 
Sallust.  Perhaps  the  one  passage  in  the  play 
which  is  really  significant  is  that  in  which  the 
hero  says: — 

If  but  for  one  brief  moment  I  could  flame 
And  blaze  through  space,  and  be  a  falling  star; 
If  only  once,  and  by  one  glorious  deed, 
I  could  but  knit  the  name  of  Catiline 
With  glory  and  with  deathless  high  renown, — 
Then  should  I  blithely,  in  the  hour  of  conquest, 
Leave  all,  and  hie  me  to  an  alien  shore, 
Press  the  keen  dagger  gayly  to  my  heart, 
And  die;  for  then  I  should  have  lived  indeed. 

This  has  its  personal  interest,  since  we  know, 
on  the  evidence  of  his  sister,  that  such  was  the 
tenor  of  Ibsen's  private  talk  about  himself  at  that 
precise  time. 


3o  IBSEN 

Very  imperfect  as  Catilina  is  in  dramatic  art, 
and  very  primitive  as  is  the  development  of  plot 
in  it,  it  presents  one  aspect,  as  a  literary  work, 
which  is  notable.  That  it  should  exist  at  all  is 
curious,  since,  surprising  as  it  seems,  it  had  no 
precursor.  Although,  during  the  thirty-five  years 
of  Norwegian  independence,  various  classes  of 
literature  had  been  cultivated  with  extreme  dili- 
gence, the  drama  had  hitherto  been  totally  neg- 
lected. With  the  exception  of  a  graceful  opera 
by  Bjerregaard,  which  enjoyed  a  success  sustained 
over  a  quarter  of  a  century,  the  only  writings  in 
dramatic  form  produced  in  Norway  between  1815 
and  1850  were  the  absurd  lyrical  farces  of  Werge- 
land,  which  were  devoid  of  all  importance.  Such 
a  thing  as  a  three-act  tragedy  in  blank  verse  was 
unknown  in  modern  Norway,  so  that  the  youthful 
apothecary  in  Grimstad,  whatever  he  was  doing, 
was  not  slavishly  copying  the  fashions  of  his  own 
countrymen. 

The  principal,  if  not  the  only  influence  which 
acted  upon  Ibsen  at  this  moment,  was  that  of  the 
great  Danish  tragedian,  Adam  Oehlenschlager. 
It  might  be  fantastically  held  that  the  leading 
romantic  luminary  of  Scandinavia  withdrew  on 
purpose  to  make  room  for  his  realistic  successor, 
since  Oehlenschlager's  latest  play,  Kiartan  and 
Gudrun,  appeared  just  when  Ibsen  was  planning 


EARLY  INFLUENCES  31 

Catilina,  while  the  death  of  the  Danish  poet 
(January  20,  1850)  was  practically  simultaneous 
with  Ibsen's  arrival  in  Christiania.  In  later  years, 
Ibsen  thought  that  Holberg  and  Oehlenschlager 
were  the  only  dramatists  he  had  read  when  his 
own  first  play  was  written;  he  was  sure  that  he 
knew  nothing  of  Schiller,  Shakespeare  or  the 
French.  Of  the  rich  and  varied  dramatic  litera- 
ture of  Denmark,  in  the  generation  between 
Oehlenschlager's  and  his  own,  he  must  also  for  the 
present  have  known  nothing.  The  influence  of 
Heiberg  and  of  Hertz,  presently  to  be  so  potent, 
had  evidently  not  yet  begun.  But  it  is  impor- 
tant to  perceive  that  already  Norway,  and  Nor- 
wegian taste  and  opinion,  were  nothing  to  him 
in  his  selection  of  themes  and  forms. 

It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  the  taste  for 
dramatic  performances  did  not  exist  in  Norway, 
because  no  Norwegian  plays  were  written.  On 
the  contrary,  in  most  of  the  large  towns  there 
were,  and  had  long  been,  private  theatres  or 
rooms  which  could  be  fitted  up  with  a  stage,  at 
which  wandering  troupes  of  actors  gave  perform- 
ances that  were  eagerly  attended  by  "the  best 
people."  These  actors,  however,  were  exclu- 
sively Danes,  and  there  was  an  accepted  tradition 
that  Norwegians  could  not  act.  If  they  at- 
tempted to  do  so,  their  native  accents  proved 


32  IBSEN 

disagreeable  to  their  fellow-citizens,  who  de- 
manded, as  an  imperative  condition,  the  peculiar 
intonation  and  pronunciation  cultivated  at  the 
Royal  Theatre  in  Copenhagen,  as  well  as  an 
absence  of  all  native  peculiarities  of  language. 
The  stage,  therefore — and  this  is  very  important 
in  a  consideration  of  the  career  of  Ibsen — had 
come  to  be  the  symbol  of  a  certain  bias  in  political 
feeling.  Society  in  Norway  was  divided  into  two 
classes,  the  "Danomaniacs"  and  the  "Patriots." 
Neither  of  these  had  any  desire  to  alter  the  con- 
stitutional balance  of  power,  but  while  the  latter 
wished  Norway  to  be  intellectually  self-productive, 
and  leaned  to  a  further  isolation  in  language, 
literature,  art  and  manners,  the  former  thought 
that  danger  of  barbarism  lay  in  every  direction 
save  that  of  keeping  close  to  the  tradition  of  Den- 
mark, from  which  all  that  was  witty,  graceful  and 
civilized  had  proceeded. 

Accordingly  the  theatre,  at  which  exclusively 
Danish  plays  were  acted,  in  the  Danish  style,  by 
Danish  actors  and  actresses,  was  extremely  popu- 
lar with  the  conservative  class,  who  thought,  by 
attendance  on  these  performances,  to  preserve  the 
distinction  of  language  and  the  varnish  of  "high 
life"  which  came,  with  so  much  prestige,  from 
Copenhagen.  By  the  patriotic  party,  on  the  other 
hand,  the  stage  was  looked  upon  with  grave  sus- 


'• 


Ibsen   in   1868. 


EARLY  INFLUENCES  33 

picion  as  likely  to  undermine  the  purity  of  national 
feeling. 

The  earliest  attempt  at  the  opening  of  a  National 
Theatre  had  been  made  at  Christiania  by  the 
Swede,  J.  P.  Stromberg,  in  1827;  this  was  not 
successful,  and  his  theatre  was  burned  down  in 
1835.  In  it  some  effort  had  been  made  to  use  the 
Norwegian  idiom  and  to  train  native  actors,  but 
it  had  been  to  no  avail.  The  play-going  public 
liked  their  plays  to  be  Danish,  and  even  nation- 
alists of  a  pronounced  species  could  not  deny 
that  dramas  like  the  great  historical  tragedies 
of  Oehlenschlager,  many  of  which  dealt  enthu- 
siastically with  legends  that  were  peculiarly 
Norwegian,  were  as  national  as  it  was  possible  for 
poems  by  a  foreign  poet  to  be.  All  this  time,  it 
must  be  remembered,  Christiania  was  to  Copen- 
hagen as  Dublin  till  lately  was  to  London,  or  as 
New  York  was  half  a  century  ago.  It  is  in  the 
arts  that  the  old  colonial  instinct  of  dependence 
is  most  loath  to  disappear. 

The  party  of  the  nationalists,  however,  had 
been  steadily  increasing  in  activity,  and  the  uni- 
versal quickening  of  patriotic  pulses  in  1848  had 
not  been  without  its  direct  action  upon  Norway. 
Nevertheless,  for  various  reasons  of  internal 
policy,  there  was  perhaps  no  country  in  Europe 
where  this  period  of  seismic  disturbance  led  to 


34  IBSEN 

less  public  turmoil  than  precisely  here  in  the 
North.  The  accession  of  a  new  king,  Oscar  I,  in 
1844,  had  been  followed  by  a  sense  of  renewed 
national  security;  the  peasants  were  satisfied  that 
the  fresh  reign  would  be  favorable  to  their  rights 
and  liberties;  and  the  monarch  showed  every 
inclination  to  leave  his  country  of  Norway  as  much 
as  possible  to  its  own  devices.  The  result  of  all 
this  was  that  '48  left  no  mark  on  the  internal 
history  of  the  country,  and  the  fever  which  burned 
in  youthful  bosoms  was  mainly,  if  not  entirely, 
intellectual  and  transcendental.  The  young  Cati- 
line from  Grimstad,  therefore,  met  with  several 
sympathetic  rebels,  but  found  nobody  willing  to 
conspire.  But  what  he  did  find  is  so  important 
in  the  consideration  of  his  future  development  that 
it  is  needful  briefly  to  examine  it. 

Norway  had,  in  1850,  been  independent  of 
Denmark  for  thirty-six  years.  During  the  greater 
part  of  that  time  the  fiery  excitements  of  a  struggle 
for  politic  existence  had  fairly  exhausted  her 
mental  resources,  and  had  left  her  powerless  to 
inaugurate  a  national  literature.  Meanwhile,  there 
was  no  such  discontinuity  in  the  literary  and 
scientific  relations  of  the  two  countries  as  that 
which  had  broken  their  constitutional  union.  A 
tremendous  effort  was  made  by  certain  patriots  to 
discover  the  basis  of  an  entirely  independent  intel- 


EARLY  INFLUENCES  35 

lectual  life,  something  that  should  start  like  the 
phoenix  from  the  ashes  of  the  old  regime,  and 
should  offer  no  likeness  with  what  continued  to 
flourish  south  of  the  Skagarak.  But  all  the  efforts 
of  the  University  of  Christiania  were  vain  to  pre- 
vent the  cultivated  classes  from  looking  to  Copen- 
hagen as  their  centre  of  light.  Such  authors  as 
there  were,  and  they  were  few  indeed,  followed 
humbly  in  the  footsteps  of  their  Danish  brethren. 

Patriotic  historians  of  literature  are  not  always 
to  be  trusted,  and  those  who  study  native  hand- 
books of  Norwegian  criticism  must  be  on  their 
guard  when  these  deal  with  the  three  poets  who 
"inaugurated  in  song  the  young  liberties  of 
Norway.''  The  writings  of  the  three  celebrated 
lyric  patriots,  Schwach,  Bjerregaard  and  Hansen, 
will  not  bear  to  have  the  blaze  of  European  ex- 
perience cast  upon  them;  their  tapers  dwindle 
to  sparks  in  the  light  of  day.  They  gratified  the 
vanity  of  the  first  generation  after  1815,  but  they 
deserve  no  record  in  the  chronicles  of  poetic  art. 
If  Ibsen  ever  read  these  rhymes  of  circumstance, 
it  must  have  been  to  treat  them  with  contempt. 

Twenty  years  after  the  Union,  however,  and  in 
Ibsen's  early  childhood,  an  event  occurred  which 
was  unique  in  the  history  of  Norwegian  literature, 
and  the  consequences  of  which  were  far-reaching. 
As  is  often  the  case  in  countries  where  the  art  of 


36  IBSEN 

verse  is  as  yet  little  exercised,  there  grew  up  about 
1830  a  warm  and  general,  but  uncritical,  delight 
in  poetry.  This  instinct  was  presently  satisfied 
by  the  effusion  of  a  vast  quantity  of  metrical 
writing,  most  of  it  very  bad,  and  was  exasperated 
by  a  violent  personal  feud  which  for  a  while  in- 
terested all  educated  persons  in  Norway  to  a  far 
greater  degree  than  any  other  intellectual  or,  for 
the  time  being,  even  political  question.  From 
1834  to  1838  the  interests  of  all  cultivated  people 
centred  around  what  was  called  the  "Twilight 
Feud"  (D&mringsfejden),  and  no  record  of  Ibsen's 
intellectual  development  can  be  complete  with- 
out a  reference  to  this  celebrated  controversy, 
the  results  of  which  long  outlived  the  popularity 
of  its  skits  and  pamphlets. 

Modern  Norwegian  literature  began  with  this 
great  fight.  The  protagonists  were  two  poets  of 
undoubted  talent,  whose  temperaments  and  ten- 
dencies were  so  diametrically  opposed  that  it 
seemed  as  though  Providence  must  have  set  them 
down  in  that  raw  and  inflammable  civilization 
for  the  express  purpose  of  setting  the  standing 
corn  of  thought  on  fire.  Henrik  Wergeland 
(1808-45)  was  a  belated  son  of  the  French  Rev- 
olution; ideas,  fancies,  melodies  and  enthusi- 
asms fermented  in  his  ill-regulated  brain,  and  he 
poured  forth  verses  in  a  violent  and  endless  stream. 


EARLY  INFLUENCES  37 

It  is  difficult,  from  the  sources  of  Scandinavian 
opinion,  to  obtain  a  sensible  impression  of  Werge- 
land.  The  critics  of  Norway  as  persistently  over- 
rate his  talents  as  those  of  Denmark  neglect  and 
ridicule  his  pretensions.  The  Norwegians  still 
speak  of  him  as  himmelstrczvende  sublim  ("sub- 
lime in  his  heavenly  aspiration");  the  Danes 
will  have  it  that  he  was  an  hysterical  poetaster. 
Neither  view  commends  itself  to  a  foreign  reader 
of  the  poet. 

The  fact,  internationally  stated,  seems  rather 
to  be  this.  In  Wergeland  we  have  a  typical 
example  of  the  effects  of  excess  of  fancy  in  a  vio- 
lently productive  but  essential  uncritical  nature. 
He  was  ecstatic,  unmeasured,  a  reckless  improvis- 
atore.  In  his  ideas  he  was  preposterously  human- 
itarian; a  prodigious  worker,  his  vigor  of  mind 
seemed  never  exhausted  by  his  labors;  in  theory 
an  idealist,  in  his  private  life  he  was  charged 
with  being  scandalously  sensual.  He  was  so  much 
the  victim  of  his  inspiration  that  it  would  come 
upon  him  like  a  descending  wind,  and  leave  him 
physically  prostrate.  In  Wergeland  we  see  an 
instance  of  the  poetical  temper  in  its  most  un- 
bridled form.  A  glance  through  the  enormous 
range  of  his  collected  works  is  like  an  excursion 
into  chaos.  We  are  met  almost  at  the  threshold 
by  a  colossal  epic,  Creation,  Man  and  the  Messiah 


38  IBSEN 

(1830);  by  songs  that  turn  into  dithyrambic  odes, 
by  descriptive  pieces  which  embrace  the  universe, 
by  all  the  froth  and  roar  and  turbidity  of  genius, 
with  none  of  its  purity  and  calm.  The  genius  is 
there;  it  is  idle  to  deny  it;  but  it  is  in  a  state  of 
violent  turmoil. 

It  is  when  the  ruling  talent  of  an  age  is  of  the 
character  of  Wergeland's— 

Thundering  and  bursting, 
In  torrents,  in  waves, 
Carolling  and  shouting 
Over  tombs,  over  graves — 

that  delicate  spirits,  as  in  Matthew  Arnold's 
poem,  sigh  for  the  silence  and  the  hush,  and  rise 
at  length  in  open  rebellion  against  lacchus  and 
his  maenads,  who  destroy  all  the  quiet  of  life  and 
who  madden  innocent  blood  with  their  riot.  Johan 
Sebastian  Welhaven  (1807-73)  was  a  student  at 
the  University  with  Wergeland,  and  he  remained 
silent  while  the  latter  made  the  welkin  ring  louder 
and  louder  with  his  lyric  shrieks.  Welhaven 
endured  the  rationalist  and  republican  rhetoric 
of  Wergeland  as  long  as  he  could,  although  with 
growing  exasperation,  until  the  rhapsodical  author 
of  Creation,  transgressing  all  moderation,  accused 
those  who  held  reasonable  views  in  literature 
and  politics  of  being  traitors.  Then  it  became 


EARLY  INFLUENCES  39 

necessary  to  deal  with  this  raw  and  local  par- 
ody of  Victor  Hugo.  When,  in  the  words  of 
The  Cask  of  Amontillado,  Wergeland  "ventured 
upon  insult,"  Welhaven  "vowed  he  would  be 
avenged." 

Welhaven  formed  as  complete  a  contrast  to  his 
antagonist  as  could  be  imagined.  He  was  of  the 
class  of  Sully  Prudhomme,  of  Matthew  Arnold, 
of  Lowell,  to  name  three  of  his  younger  contem- 
poraries. In  his  nature  all  was  based  upon 
equilibrium;  his  spirit,  though  full  of  graceful 
and  philosophical  intuitions,  was  critical  rather 
than  creative.  He  wrote  little,  and  with  diffi- 
culty, and  in  exquisite  form.  His  life  was  as 
blamelessly  correct  as  his  literary  art  was  har- 
monious. Wergeland  knew  nothing  of  the  Da- 
nish tradition  of  his  day,  which  he  treated  with 
violent  and  bitter  contempt.  Welhaven,  who 
had  moved  in  the  circle  of  the  friends  of  Rahbek, 
instinctively  referred  every  literary  problem  to 
the  tribunal  of  Danish  taste.  He  saw  that  with 
the  enthusiasm  with  which  the  poetry  of  Werge- 
land was  received  in  Norway  was  connected  a  sus- 
picion of  mental  discipline,  a  growing  worship  of 
the  peasant  and  a  hatred  and  scorn  of  Denmark, 
with  all  of  which  he  had  no  sympathy.  He 
thought  the  time  had  come  for  better  things;  that 
the  national  temper  ought  to  be  mollified  with  the 


40  IBSEN 

improved  economic  situation  of  the  country;  that 
the  students,  who  were  taking  a  more  and  more 
prominent  place,  ought  to  be  on  the  side  of  the 
angels.  It  was  not  unnatural  that  Welhaven 
should  look  upon  the  corybantic  music  of  Werge- 
land  as  the  source  and  origin  of  an  evil  of  which  it 
was  really  the  symptom;  he  gathered  his  powers 
together  to  crush  it,  and  he  published  a  thunder- 
bolt of  sonnets. 

The  English  reader,  familiar  with  the  power- 
lessness  of  even  the  best  verse  to  make  any  im- 
pression upon  Anglo-Saxon  opinion,  may  smile 
to  think  of  a  great  moral  and  ethical  attack  con- 
ducted with  no  better  weapon  than  a  paper  of 
sonnets.  But  the  scene  of  the  fight  was  a  small, 
intensely  local,  easily  agitated  society  of  persons, 
all  keenly  though  narrowly  educated,  and  all  ac- 
customed to  be  addressed  in  verse.  Welhaven's 
pamphlet  was  entitled  The  Twilight  of  Norway 
(1834),  and  the  sonnets  of  which  it  consisted  were 
highly  polished  in  form,  filled  with  direct  and 
pointed  references  to  familiar  persons  and  events 
and  absolutely  unshrinking  in  attack.  No  poetry 
of  equal  excellence  had  been  produced  in  Norway 
since  the  Union.  It  is  not  surprising  that  this 
invective  against  the  tendencies  of  the  youthful 
bard  over  whose  rhapsodies  all  Norway  was 
growing  crazy  with  praise  should  arrest  universal 


EARLY  INFLUENCES  41 

attention,  although  in  the  Twilight  Welhaven 
adroitly  avoided  mentioning  Wergeland  by  name. 
Fanaticism  gathered  in  an  angry  army  around 
the  outraged  standard  of  the  republican  poet,  but 
the  lovers  of  order  and  discipline  had  found  a 
voice,  and  they  clustered  about  Welhaven  with 
their  support.  Language  was  not  minced  by  the 
assailants,  and  still  less  by  the  defenders.  The 
lovers  of  Wergeland  were  told  that  politics  and 
brandy  were  their  only  pleasures,  but  those  of 
Welhaven  were  warned  that  they  were  known  to 
be  fed  with  bribes  from  Copenhagen.  Mean- 
while Welhaven  himself,  in  successive  publica- 
tions, calmly  analyzed  the  writings  of  his  antago- 
nist, and  proved  them  to  be  "in  complete  rebellion 
against  sound  thought  and  the  laws  of  beauty." 
The  feud  raged  from  1834  to  1838,  and  left  Nor- 
way divided  into  two  rival  camps  of  taste. 

Although  the  "Twilight  Feud"  had  passed 
away  before  Ibsen  ceased  to  be  a  boy,  the  effect 
of  it  was  too  widely  spread  not  to  affect  him.  In 
point  of  fact,  we  see  by  the  earliest  of  his  lyric 
poems  that  while  he  was  at  Grimstad  he  had  fully 
made  up  his  mind.  His  early  songs  and  compli- 
mentary pieces  are  all  in  the  Danish  taste,  and  if 
they  show  any  native  influence  at  all,  it  is  that  of 
Welhaven.  The  extreme  superficiality  of  Werge- 
land would  naturally  be  hateful  to  so  arduous  a 


42  IBSEN 

craftsman  as  Ibsen,  and  it  is  a  fact  that  so  far  as 
his  writings  reveal  his  mind  to  us,  the  all-popular 
poet  of  his  youth  appears  to  be  absolutely  unknown 
to  him.  What  this  signifies  may  be  realized  if 
we  say  that  it  is  as  though  a  great  English  or 
French  poet  of  the  second  half  of  the  nineteenth 
century  should  seem  to  have  never  heard  of  Tenny- 
son or  Victor  Hugo.  On  the  other  hand,  at  one 
crucial  point  of  a  late  play,  Little  Eyolf,  Ibsen 
actually  pauses  to  quote  Welhaven. 

In  critical  history  the  absence  of  an  influence  is 
sometimes  as  significant  as  the  presence  of  it. 
The  looseness  of  Wergeland's  style,  its  frothy 
abundance,  its  digressions  and  parentheses,  its 
slipshod  violence,  would  be  to  Ibsen  so  many 
beacons  of  warning,  to  be  viewed  with  horror  and 
alarm.  A  poem  of  three  stanzas,  "To  the  Poets 
of  Norway,"  only  recently  printed,  dates  from  his 
early  months  in  Christiania,  and  shows  that  even 
in  1850  Ibsen  was  impatient  with  the  conven- 
tional literature  of  his  day.  "Less  about  the 
glaciers  and  the  pine-forests,"  he  cries,  "less 
about  the  dusty  legends  of  the  past,  and  more 
about  what  is  going  on  in  the  silent  hearts  of  your 
brethren!"  Here  already  is  sounded  the  note 
which  was  ultimately  to  distinguish  him  from  all 
the  previous  writers  of  the  North. 

No   letters   have   been   published   which   throw 


EARLY  INFLUENCES  43 

light  on  Ibsen's  first  two  years  in  the  capital.  We 
know  that  he  did  not  communicate  with  his 
parents,  whose  poverty  was  equalled  by  his  own. 
He  could  receive  no  help  from  them,  nor  offer 
them  any,  and  he  refrained,  as  they  refrained, 
from  letter  writing.  This  separation  from  his  fam- 
ily, begun  in  this  way,  grew  into  a  habit,  so  that 
when  his  father  died  in  1877  no  word  had  passed 
between  him  and  his  son  for  nearly  thirty  years. 
When  Ibsen  reached  Christiania,  in  March,  1850, 
his  first  act  was  to  seek  out  his  friend  Schulerud, 
who  was  already  a  student.  For  some  time  he 
shared  the  room  of  Schulerud  and  his  thrifty 
meals;  later  on  the  two  friends,  in  company  with 
Theodor  Abildgaard,  a  young  revolutionary  jour- 
nalist, lived  in  lodgings  kept  by  a  certain  Mother 
Saether. 

Schulerud  received  a  monthly  allowance  which 
was  "not  enough  for  one,  and  starvation  for 
two";  but  Ibsen's  few  dollars  soon  came  to  an 
end,  and  he  seems  to  have  lived  on  the  kindness 
of  Schulerud  to  their  great  mutual  privation. 
Both  young  men  attended  the  classes  of  a  cele- 
brated "crammer"  of  that  day,  H.  A.  S.  Helt- 
berg,  who  had  opened  in  1843  a  Latin  school 
where  elder  pupils  came  for  a  two-years'  course  to 
prepare  them  for  taking  their  degree.  This  place, 
known  familiarly  as  "the  Student  Factory,"  holds 


44  IBSEN 

quite  a  prominent  place  in  Norwegian  literary 
history,  Ibsen,  Bjornson,  Vinje  and  Jonas  Lie 
having  attended  its  classes  and  passed  from  it  to 
the  University. 

Between  these  young  men,  the  leading  forces 
of  literature  in  the  coming  age,  a  generous  friend- 
ship sprang  up,  despite  the  disparity  in  their  ages. 
Vinje,  a  peasant  from  Thelemark,  was  thirty- 
two;  he  had  been  a  village  schoolmaster  and  had 
only  now,  in  1850,  contrived  to  reach  the  Uni- 
versity. With  Vinje,  the  founder  of  the  move- 
ment for  writing  exclusively  in  Norwegian  patois^ 
Ibsen  had  a  warm  personal  sympathy,  while  he 
gave  no  intellectual  adherence  to  his  theories. 
Between  the  births  of  Vinje  and  Bjornson  there 
stretched  a  period  of  fourteen  years,  yet  Bjornson 
was  a  student  before  either  Ibsen  or  Vinje.  That 
Ibsen  immediately  formed  Bjb'rnson's  acquaint- 
ance seems  to  be  proved  from  the  fact  that  they 
both  signed  a  protest  against  the  deportation  of 
a  Dane  called  Harring  on  May  29,  1850.  It  was 
a  fortunate  chance  which  threw  Ibsen  thus  sud- 
denly into  the  midst  of  a  group  of  those  in  whom 
the  hopes  of  the  new  generation  were  centred. 
But  we  are  left  largely  to  conjecture  in  what  man- 
ner their  acquaintanceship  acted  upon  his  mind. 

His  material  life  during  the  next  year  is  obscure. 
Driven  by  the  extremity  of  need,  it  is  plain  that 


EARLY  INFLUENCES  45 

he  adopted  every  means  open  to  him  by  which 
he  could  add  a  few  dollars  to  Schulerud's  little 
store.  He  wrote  for  the  poor  and  fugitive  jour- 
nals of  the  day,  in  prose  and  verse;  but  the  pay- 
ment of  the  Norwegian  press  in  those  days  was 
almost  nothing.  It  is  difficult  to  know  how  he 
subsisted,  yet  he  continued  to  exist.  Although 
none  of  his  letters  of  this  period  seem  to  have 
been  preserved,  a  few  landmarks  are  left  us.  The 
little  play  called  Kcempelnoien  (The  Warrior's 
Barrow),  which  he  had  brought  unfinished  with 
him  from  Grimstad,  was  completed  and  put  into 
shape  in  May,  1850,  accepted  at  the  Christiania 
Theatre,  and  acted  three  times  during  the  follow- 
ing autumn.  Perhaps  the  most  interesting  fact 
connected  with  this  performance  was  that  the 
only  female  part,  that  of  Blanka,  was  taken  by  a 
young  debutante,  Laura  Svendsen;  this  was  the 
actress  afterwards  to  rise  to  the  height  of  eminence 
as  the  celebrated  Mrs.  Gundersen,  no  doubt  the 
most  gifted  of  all  Ibsen's  original  interpreters. 

It  was  a  matter  of  course  that  the  poet  was 
greatly  cheered  by  the  acceptance  of  his  play, 
and  he  immediately  set  to  work  on  another,  Olaf 
Ltljekrans;  but  this  he  put  aside  when  Kcempe- 
hoien  practically  failed.  He  wrote  a  satirical 
comedy  called  Norma.  He  endeavored  to  get 
certain  of  his  works,  dramatic  and  lyric,  published 


46  IBSEN 

in  Christiania,  but  all  the  schemes  fell  through.  It 
is  certain  that  1851  began  darkly  for  the  young 
man,  and  that  his  misfortunes  encouraged  in  him 
a  sour  and  rebellious  ^temper.  For  the  first  and 
only  time  in  his  life  he  meddled  with  practical 
politics.  Vinje  and  he — in  company  with  a 
charming  person,  Paul  Botten-Hansen  (1824-69), 
who  flits  very  pleasantly  through  the  literary 
history  of  this  time — founded  a  newspaper  called 
Andhrimner,  which  lasted  for  nine  months. 

One  of  the  contributors  was  Abildgaard,  who,  as 
we  have  seen,  lived  in  the  same  house  with  Ibsen. 
He  was  a  wild  being,  who  had  adopted  the  repub- 
lican theories  of  the  day  in  their  crudest  form. 
He  posed  as  the  head  of  a  little  body  whose  object 
was  to  dethrone  the  king,  and  to  found  a  democracy 
in  Norway.  On  July  7,  1851,  the  police  made  a 
raid  upon  these  childish  conspirators,  the  leaders 
being  arrested  and  punished  with  a  long  im- 
prisonment. The  poet  escaped,  as  by  the  skin 
of  his  teeth,  and  the  warning  was  a  lifelong  one. 
He  never  meddled  with  politics  any  more.  This 
was,  indeed,  as  perhaps  he  felt,  no  time  for  re- 
bellion; all  over  Europe  the  eruption  of  socialism 
had  spent  itself,  and  the  docility  of  the  popula- 
tions had  become  wonderful. 

The  discomfort  and  uncertainty  of  Ibsen's  posi- 
tion in  Christiania  made  him  glad  to  fill  a  post 


EARLY  INFLUENCES  47 

which  the  violinist,  Ole  Bull,  offered  him  during 
the  autumn.  The  newly  constituted  National 
Theatre  in  Bergen  (opened  Jan.  2,  1850)  had 
accepted  a  prologue  written  for  an  occasion  by 
the  young  poet,  and  on  November  6,  1851,  Ibsen 
entered  into  a  contract  by  which  he  bound  him- 
self to  go  to  Bergen  "to  assist  the  theatre  as  dra- 
matic author."  The  salary  was  less  than  £jo  a 
year,  but  it  was  eked  out  by  travelling  grants, 
and  little  as  it  might  be,  it  was  substantially  more 
than  the  nothing-at-all  which  Ibsen  had  been 
enjoying  in  Christiania. 

It  is  difficult  to  imagine  what  asset  could  be 
brought  to  the  treasuries  of  a  public  theatre  by 
a  youth  of  three  and  twenty  so  ill-educated,  so 
empty  of  experience  and  so  ill-read  as  Ibsen  was 
in  1851.  His  crudity,  we  may  be  sure,  passed 
belief.  He  was  the  novice  who  has  not  learned 
his  business,  the  tyro  to  whom  the  elements  of 
his  occupation  are  unknown.  We  have  seen  that 
when  he  wrote  Catilina  he  had  neither  sat  through 
nor  read  any  of  the  plays  of  the  world,  whether 
ancient  or  modern.  The  pieces  which  belong 
to  his  student  years  reveal  a  preoccupation  with 
Danish  dramas  of  the  older  school,  Oehlen- 
schlager  and  (if  we  may  guess  what  Norma  was) 
Holberg,  but  with  nothing  else.  Yet  Ole  Bull, 
one  of  the  most  far-sighted  men  of  his  time,  must 


48  IBSEN 

have  perceived  the  germs  of  theatrical  genius  in 
him,  and  it  is  probable  that  Ibsen  owed  his  ap- 
pointment more  to  what  this  wise  patron  felt  in 
his  future  than  what  Ole  Bull  or  any  one  else 
could  possibly  point  to  as  yet  accomplished.  Un- 
questionably, a  rude  theatrical  penetration  could 
already  he  divined  in  his  talk  about  the  stage, 
vague  and  empirical  as  that  must  have  been. 

At  all  events,  to  Bergen  he  went,  as  a  sort  of 
literary  manager,  as  a  Claretie  or  Antoine,  to 
compare  a  small  thing  with  great  ones,  and  the 
fact  was  of  inestimable  value.  It  may  even  be 
held,  without  fear  of  paradox,  that  this  was  the 
turning-point  of  Ibsen's  life,  that  this  blind  step 
in  the  dark,  taken  in  the  magnificent  freedom  of 
youth,  was  what  made  him  what  he  became.  No 
Bergen  in  1851,  we  may  say,  and  no  Doll's  House 
or  Hedda  Gabler  ultimately  to  follow.  For  what 
it  did  was  to  force  this  stubborn  genius,  which 
might  so  easily  have  slipped  into  sinister  and 
abnormal  paths,  and  have  missed  the  real  human- 
ity of  the  stage,  to  take  the  tastes  of  the  vulgar 
into  due  consideration  and  to  acquaint  himself 
with  the  necessary  laws  of  play-composition. 

Ibsen  may  seem  to  have  little  relation  with 
the  drama  of  the  world,  but  in  reality  he  is  linked 
with  it  at  every  step.  There  is  something  of 
Shakespeare  in  John  Gabriel  Borkman,  something 


EARLY  INFLUENCES  49 

of  Moliere  in  Ghosts,  something  of  Goethe  in 
Peer  Gynt.  We  may  go  further  and  say,  though 
it  would  have  made  Ibsen  wince,  that  there  is 
something  of  Scribe  in  An  Enemy  of  the  People. 
It  is  very  doubtful  whether,  without  the  disci- 
pline which  forced  him  to  put  on  the  stage,  at 
Bergen  and  in  Christiania,  plays  evidently  un- 
sympathetic to  his  own  taste,  which  obliged  him 
to  do  his  best  for  the  popular  reception  of  those 
plays,  and  which  forced  him  minutely  to  analyze 
their  effects,  he  would  ever  have  been  the  world- 
moving  dramatist  which,  as  all  sane  critics  must 
admit,  he  at  length  became. 

He  made  some  mistakes  at  first;  how  could  he 
fail  to  do  so  ?  It  was  the  recognition  of  these 
blunders,  and  perhaps  the  rough  censure  of  them 
in  the  local  press,  which  induced  the  Bergen 
theatre  to  scrape  a  few  dollars  together  and  send 
him,  in  charge  of  some  of  the  leading  actors  and 
actresses,  to  Copenhagen  and  Dresden  for  in- 
struction. To  go  from  Bergen  to  Copenhagen 
was  like  travelling  from  Abdera  to  Athens,  and  to 
find  a  species  of  Sophocles  in  J.  A.  Heiberg,  who 
had  since  1849  been  sole  manager  of  the  Royal 
Theatre.  Here  the  drama  of  the  world,  all  the 
salutary  names,  all  the  fine  traditions,  burst  upon 
the  pilgrims  from  the  North.  Heiberg,  the  gra- 
cious and  many-sided,  was  the  centre  of  light  in 


50  IBSEN 

those  days;  no  one  knew  the  stage  as  he  knew 
it,  no  one  interpreted  it  with  such  splendid  in- 
telligence, and  he  received  the  crude  Norwegian 
"dramatist-manager"  with  the  utmost  elegance 
of  cordiality.  Among  the  teachers  of  Ibsen, 
Heiberg  ranks  as  the  foremost.  We  may  go 
farther  and  say  that  he  was  the  last.  When  Ibsen 
had  learned  the  lesson  of  Heiberg,  only  nature 
and  his  own  genius  had  anything  more  to  teach 
him.1  In  August,  1852,  rich  with  the  spoils  of 
time,  but  otherwise  poor  indeed,  Ibsen  made  his 
way  back  to  his  duties  in  Bergen. 

1  Perhaps  no  author,  during  the  whole  of  his  career,  more  deeply 
impressed  Ibsen  with  reverence  and  affection  than  Johan  Ludvig 
Heiberg  did.  When  the  great  Danish  poet  died  (at  Bonderup,  August 
25,  1860),  Ibsen  threw  on  his  tomb  the  characteristic  bunch  of  bitter 
herbs  called  Til  de  genlevende — "To  the  Survivors,"  in  which  he  ex- 
pressed the  faintest  appreciation  of  those  who  lavished  posthumous 
honor  on  Heiberg  in  Denmark: 

In  your  land  a  torch  he  lifted; 

With  its  flame  ye  scorched  his  forehead. 

How  to  swing  the  sword  he  taught  you, 
And, — ye  plunged  it  in  his  bosom. 

While  he  routed  trolls  of  darkness, — 

With  your  shields  you  tripped  and  bruised  him. 

But  his  glittering  star  of  conquest 
Ye  must  guard,  since  he  has  left  you: 

Try,  at  least,  to  keep  it  shining, 

While  the  thorn-crowned  conqueror  slumbers. 


CHAPTER  III 
LIFE  IN  BERGEN  (1852-57) 

IBSEN'S  native  biographers  have  not  found 
much  to  record,  and  still  less  that  deserves  to 
be  recorded,  about  his  life  during  the  next  five 
years.  He  remained  in  Bergen,  cramped  by  want 
of  means  in  his  material  condition,  and  much 
harassed  and  worried  by  the  little  pressing  re- 
quirements of  the  theatre.  It  seems  that  every 
responsibility  fell  upon  his  shoulders,  and  that 
there  was  no  part  of  stage-life  that  it  was  not  his 
duty  to  look  after.  The  dresses  of  the  actresses, 
the  furniture,  the  scene-painting,  the  instruction 
of  raw  Norwegian  actors  and  actresses,  the  selec- 
tion of  plays,  now  to  please  himself,  now  to  please 
the  bourgeois  of  Bergen,  all  this  must  be  done  by 
the  poet  or  not  done  at  all.  Just  so,  two  hundred 
years  earlier,  we  may  imagine  Moliere,  at  Car- 
cassonne or  Albi,  bearing  up  in  his  arms,  a  weary 
Titan,  all  the  frivolities  and  anxieties  and  mis- 
deeds of  a  whole  company  of  comedians. 

So  far  as  our  very  scanty  evidence  goes,  we  find 
the  poet  isolated  from  his  fellows,  so  far  as  iso- 


52  IBSEN 

lation  was  possible,  during  his  long  stay  at  Bergen. 
He  was  not  accused,  and  if  there  had  been  a 
chance  he  would  have  been  accused,  of  dereliction. 
No  doubt  he  pushed  through  the  work  of  the 
theatre  doggedly,  but  certainly  not  in  a  con- 
vivial spirit.  The  Norwegians  are  a  hospitable 
and  festal  people,  and  there  is  no  question  that 
the  manager  of  the  theatre  would  have  unusual 
opportunities  of  being  jolly  with  his  friends.  But 
it  does  not  appear  that  Ibsen  made  friends;  if 
so,  they  were  few,  and  they  were  as  quiet  as  him- 
self. Even  in  these  early  years  he  did  not  invite 
confidences,  and  no  one  found  him  wearing  his 
heart  upon  his  sleeve.  He  went  through  his  work 
without  effusion,  and  there  is  no  doubt  that  what 
leisure  he  enjoyed  he  spent  in  study,  mainly  of 
dramatic  literature. 

His  reading  must  have  been  limited  by  his 
insensibility  to  foreign  languages.  All  through 
his  life  he  forgot  the  tongues  of  other  countries 
almost  faster  than  he  gained  them.  Probably, 
at  this  time,  he  had  begun  to  know  German,  a 
language  in  which  he  did  ultimately  achieve  a 
fluency  which  was,  it  appears,  always  ungram- 
matical.  But,  as  is  not  unfrequent  with  a  man 
who  is  fond  of  reading  but  no  linguist,  Ibsen's 
French  and  English  came  and  went  in  a  trem- 
bling uncertainty.  As  time  passed  on,  he  gave 


LIFE  IN   BERGEN   (1852-57)          53 

up  the  effort  to  read,  even  a  newspaper,  in  either 
language. 

The  mile-stones  in  this  otherwise  blank  time  are 
the  original  plays  which,  perhaps  in  accordance 
with  some  clause  in  his  agreement,  he  produced 
at  his  theatre  in  the  first  week  of  January  in  each 
year.  A  list  of  them  cannot  be  spared  in  this 
place  to  the  most  indolent  of  readers,  since  it 
offers,  in  a  nutshell,  a  resume  of  what  the  busy 
imagination  of  Ibsen  was  at  work  upon  up  to  his 
thirtieth  year.  His  earliest  new-year's  gift  to 
the  play-goers  of  Bergen  was  St.  John's  Night, 
1853,  a  piece  which  has  not  been  printed;  in 
1854  he  revived  The  Warrior  s  Barrow;  in  1855 
he  made  an  immense  although  irregular  advance 
with  Lady  Inger  at  Ostraat;  in  1856  he  produced 
The  Feast  at  Solhoug;  in  1857  a  rewritten  version 
of  the  early  01  af  Liljekrans.  These  are  the  juve- 
nile works  of  Ibsen,  which  are  scarcely  counted  in 
the  recognized  canon  of  his  writings.  None  of 
them  is  completely  representative  of  his  genius, 
and  several  are  not  yet  within  reach  of  the  English 
reader.  Yet  they  have  a  considerable  importance, 
and  must  detain  us  for  a  while.  They  are  remark- 
able as  showing  the  vigor  of  the  effort  by  which 
he  attempted  to  create  an  independent  style  for 
himself,  no  less  than  the  great  difficulties  which 
he  encountered  in  following  this  admirable  aim. 


54  IBSEN 

Lady  Inger  at  Ostraat,  written  in  the  winter  of 
1854  but  not  published  until  1857,  is  unique 
among  Ibsen's  works  as  a  romantic  exercise  in  the 
manner  of  Scribe.  It  is  the  sole  example  of  a 
theme  taken  by  him  directly  from  comparatively 
modern  history,  and  treated  purely  for  its  value 
as  a  study  of  contemporary  intrigue.  From  this 
point  of  view  it  curiously  exemplifies  a  remark  of 
Hazlitt:  "The  progress  of  manners  and  knowl- 
edge has  an  influence  on  the  stage,  and  will  in 
time  perhaps  destroy  both  tragedy  and  comedy. 
...  At  last,  there  will  be  nothing  left,  good  nor 
bad,  to  be  desired  or  dreaded,  on  the  theatre  or 
in  real  life." 

When  Ibsen  undertook  to  write  about  Inger 
Gyldenlove,  he  was  but  little  acquainted  with  the 
particulars  of  her  history.  He  conceived  her,  as 
he  found  her  in  the  incomplete  chronicles  he  con- 
sulted, as  a  Matriarch,  a  wonderful  and  heroic 
elderly  woman  around  whom  all  the  hopes  of  an 
embittered  patriotism  were  legitimately  centred. 
Unfortunately,  "the  progress  of  knowledge,"  as 
Hazlitt  would  say,  exposed  the  falsity  of  this 
conception.  A  closer  inspection  of  the  docu- 
ments, and  further  analysis  of  the  condition  of 
Norway  in  1528,  destroyed  the  fair  illusion,  and 
showed  Ibsen  in  the  light  of  an  indulgent 
idealist. 


LIFE  IN   BERGEN   (1852-57)          55 

Here  is  what  Jaeger1  has  to  give  us  of  the  dis- 
concerting results  of  research: 

In  real  life  Lady  Inger  was  not  a  woman  formed  upon  so 
grand  a  plan.  She  was  the  descendant  of  an  old  and  noble 
family  which  had  preserved  its  dignity,  and  she  consequently 
was  the  wealthiest  landowner  in  the  country.  This,  and  this 
alone,  gives  her  a  right  to  a  place  in  history.  If  we  study  her 
life,  we  find  no  reason  to  suppose  that  patriotic  considerations 
ever  affected  her  conduct.  The  motive  power  of  her  actions 
was  on  a  far  lower  plane,  and  seems  to  have  consisted  mainly 
in  an  amazingly  strong  instinct  for  adding  to  her  wealth  and 
her  status.  We  find  her,  for  instance,  on  one  occasion 
seizing  the  estates  of  a  neighbor,  and  holding  them  till  she 
was  actually  forced  to  resign  them.  When  she  gave  her 
daughters  in  marriage  to  Danish  noblemen,  it  was  to  secure 
direct  advantage  from  alliance  with  the  most  high-born  sons- 
in-law  procurable.  When  she  took  a  convent  under  her 
protection,  she  contrived  to  extort  a  rent  which  well  repaid 
her.  Even  for  a  good  action  she  exacted  a  return,  and 
when  she  offered  harbor  to  the  persecuted  Chancellor,  she 
had  the  adroitness  to  be  well  rewarded  by  a  large  sum  in 
rose-nobles  and  Hungarian  gulden. 

All  this  could  not  fail  to  be  highly  exasperating 
to  Ibsen,  who  had  set  out  to  be  a  realist,  and  was 
convicted  by  the  spiteful  hand  of  history  of  hav- 
ing been  an  idealist  of  the  rose-water  class.  No 
wonder  that  he  never  touched  the  sequence  of 
modern  events  any  more. 

i  In  Et  litercert  Livsbillede. 


56  IBSEN 

There  is  some  slight,  but  of  course  unconscious, 
resemblance  to  Macbeth  in  the  external  charac- 
ter of  Lady  Inger.  This  play  has  something  of 
the  roughness  of  a  mediaeval  record,  and  it  de- 
picts a  condition  of  life  where  barbarism  uncouthly 
mingles  with  a  certain  luxury  of  condition.  There 
is,  however,  this  radical  difference  that  in  Lady 
Inger  there  is  nothing  preternatural,  and  it  is, 
indeed,  in  this  play  that  Ibsen  seems  first  to  ap- 
preciate the  value  of  a  stiff  attention  to  realism. 
The  romantic  elements  of  the  story,  however, 
completely  dominate  his  imagination,  and  when 
we  have  read  the  play  carefully  what  remains  with 
us  most  vividly  is  the  picturesqueness  and  unity 
of  the  scene.  The  action,  vehement  and  tumul- 
tuous as  it  is,  takes  place  entirely  within  the  walls 
of  Ostraat  castle,  a  mysterious  edifice,  sombre  and 
ancient,  built  on  a  crag  over  the  ocean,  and  dimly 
lighted  by 

Magic  casements  opening  on  the  foam 
Of  perilous  seas  in  fairy  lands  forlorn. 

The  action  is  exclusively  nocturnal,  and  so 
large  a  place  in  it  is  taken  by  huge  and  portable 
candlesticks  that  it  might  be  called  the  Tragedy 
of  the  Candelabra.  Through  the  windows,  on 
the  landward  side,  a  procession  of  mysterious 
visitors  go  by  in  the  moonlight,  one  by  one,  each 


LIFE  IN  BERGEN  (1852-57)          57 

fraught  with  the  solemnity  of  fate.  The  play  is 
full  of  striking  pictures,  groups  in  light  and  shade, 
pictorial  appeals  to  terror  and  pity. 

The  fault  of  the  drama  lies  in  the  uncertain 
conception  of  the  characters,  and  particularly  of 
that  of  the  Matriarch  herself.  Inger  is  described 
to  us  as  the  Mother  of  the  Norwegian  People,  as 
the  one  strong,  inflexible  and  implacable  brain 
moving  in  a  world  of  depressed  and  irritated  men. 
"Now  there  is  no  knight  left  in  our  land,"  says 
Finn,  but — and  this  is  the  point  from  which  the 
play  starts — there  is  Inger  Gyldenlove.  We  have 
approached  the  moment  of  crisis  when  the  fort- 
unes and  the  fates  of  Norway  rest  upon  the 
firmness  of  this  majestic  woman.  Inger  is  driven 
forward  on  the  tide  of  circumstance,  and,  how- 
ever she  may  ultimately  fail,  we  demand  evidence 
of  her  inherent  greatness.  This,  however,  we  fail 
to  receive,  and  partly,  no  doubt,  because  Ibsen  was 
still  distracted  at  the  division  of  the  ways. 

Oehlenschlager,  if  he  had  attempted  this  theme, 
would  have  made  no  attempt  after  subtlety  of 
character  painting  and  still  less  after  correctness 
of  historic  color.  He  would  have  given  small 
shrift  to  Olaf  Skaktavl,  the  psychological  outlaw. 
But  he  would  have  drawn  Inger,  the  Mother  of 
her  People,  in  majestic  strokes,  and  we  should 
have  had  a  great  simplicity,  a  noble  outline  with 


58  IBSEN 

none  of  the  detail  put  in.  Ibsen,  already,  cannot 
be  satisfied  with  this;  to  him  the  detail  is  every- 
thing, and  the  result  is  a  hopeless  incongruity 
between  the  cartoon  and  the  finished  work. 

Lady  Inger,  in  Ibsen's  play,  fails  to  impress 
us  with  greatness.  "The  deed  no  less  than  the 
attempt  confounds"  her.  She  displays,  from  the 
opening  scene,  a  weakness  that  is  explicable,  but 
excludes  all  evidence  of  her  energy.  The  ascen- 
dency of  Nils  Lykke,  over  herself  and  over  her 
singularly  and  unconvincingly  modern  daughter, 
Elima,  in  what  does  it  consist  ?  In  a  presentation 
of  a  purely  physical  attractiveness;  Nils  Lykke 
is  simply  a  voluptuary,  pursuing  his  good  fort- 
unes, with  impudent  ease,  in  the  home  of  his 
ancestral  enemies.  In  his  hands,  and  not  in  his 
only,  the  majestic  Inger  is  reduced  from  a  queen 
to  a  pawn.  All  manhood,  we  are  told,  is  dead  in 
Norway;  if  this  be  so,  then  what  a  field  is  cleared 
where  a  heroine  like  Inger,  not  young  and  a  vic- 
tim to  her  passions,  nor  old  and  delivered  to  de- 
crepit fears,  may  show  us  how  a  woman  of  intel- 
lect and  force  can  take  the  place  of  man.  In- 
stead of  this,  one  disguised  and  anonymous  ad- 
venturer after  another  comes  forth  out  of  the 
night,  and  confuses  her  with  pretensions  and 
traps  her  with  deceits  against  which  her  intellect 
protests  but  her  will  is  powerless  to  contend. 


LIFE   IN   BERGEN   (1852-57)          59 

Another  feature  in  the  conduct  of  Lady  Inger 
betrays  the  ambitious  but  the  inexperienced  dram- 
atist. No  doubt  a  pious  commentator  can  suc- 
cessfully unravel  all  the  threads  of  the  plot,  but 
the  spectator  demands  that  a  play  should  be 
clearly  and  easily  intelligible.  The  audience, 
however,  is  sorely  puzzled  by  the  events  of  this 
awful  third  night  after  Martinmas,  and  resents 
the  obscurity  of  all  this  intrigue  by  candlelight. 
Why  do  the  various  persons  meet  at  Ostraat? 
Who  sends  them  ?  Whence  do  they  come  and 
whither  do  they  go  ?  To  these  questions,  no 
doubt,  an  answer  can  be  found,  and  it  is  partly 
given,  and  very  awkwardly,  by  the  incessant  in- 
troduction of  narrative.  The  confused  and  melo- 
dramatic scene  in  the  banquet-hall  between  Nils 
Lykke  and  Skaktavl  is  of  central  importance,  but 
what  is  it  about  ?  The  business  with  Lucia's 
coffin  is  a  kind  of  nightmare,  in  the  taste  of  Web- 
ster or  of  Cyril  Tourneur.  All  these  shortcomings 
are  slurred  over  by  the  enthusiastic  critics  of  Scan- 
dinavia, yet  they  call  for  indulgence.  The  fact  is 
that  Lady  Inger  is  a  brilliant  piece  of  romantic 
extravagance,  which  is  extremely  interesting  in 
illuminating  the  evolution  of  Ibsen's  genius,  and 
particularly  as  showing  him  in  the  act  of  emanci- 
pating himself  from  Danish  traditions,  but  which 
has  little  positive  value  as  a  drama. 


60  IBSEN 

The  direct  result  of  the  failure  of  Lady  Inger — 
for  it  did  not  please  the  play-goers  of  Bergen  and 
but  partly  satisfied  its  author — was,  however,  to 
send  him  back,  for  the  moment,  more  violently 
than  ever  to  the  Danish  tradition.  Any  record 
of  this  interesting  phase  in  Ibsen's  career  is,  how- 
ever, complicated  by  the  fact  that  late  in  his  life 
(in  1883)  he  did  what  was  very  unusual  with  him: 
he  wrote  a  detailed  account  of  the  circumstances 
of  his  poetical  work  in  1855  and  1856.  He  de- 
nied, in  short,  that  he  had  undergone  any  influence 
from  the  Danish  poet  whom  he  had  been  per- 
sistently accused  of  imitating,  and  he  traced  the 
movement  of  his  mind  to  purely  Norwegian 
sources.  During  the  remainder  of  his  lifetime, 
of  course,  this  statement  greatly  confounded 
criticism,  and  there  is  still  a  danger  of  Ibsen's 
disclaimer  being  accepted  for  gospel.  However, 
literary  history  must  be  built  on  the  evidence  be- 
fore it,  and  the  actual  text  of  The  Feast  at  Solhoug 
and  of  Olaf  Liljekrans  must  be  taken  in  spite  of 
anything  their  author  chose  to  say  nearly  thirty 
years  afterwards.  Great  poets,  without  the  least 
wish  to  mystify,  often,  in  the  cant  phrase,  "cover 
their  tracks."  Tennyson,  in  advanced  years, 
denied  that  he  had  ever  been  influenced  by  Shelley 
or  Keats.  So  Ibsen  disclaimed  any  effect  upon  his 
style  of  the  lyrical  dramas  of  Hertz.  But  we 


LIFE   IN   BERGEN   (1852-57)          61 

must  appeal  from  the  arrogance  of  old  age  to  the 
actual  works  of  youth. 

Henrik  Hertz  (1798-1870)  was  the  most  ex- 
quisite, the  most  delicate,  of  the  Danish  writers 
of  his  age.  He  was  deeply  impressed  with  the 
importance  of  form  in  drama,  and  at  the  height 
of  his  powers  he  began  to  compose  rhymed  plays 
which  were  like  old  ballads  put  into  dialogue. 
His  comedy  of  Cupid's  Strokes  of  Genius  (1830) 
began  a  series  of  tragi-comedies  which  gradually 
deepened  in  passion  and  melody,  till  they  culmi- 
nated in  two  of  the  acknowledged  masterpieces  of 
the  Danish  stage,  Svend  Dyrings  House  (1837) 
and  King  Rene's  Daughter  (1845).  The  genius  of 
Hertz  was  diametrically  opposed  to  that  of  Ibsen; 
in  all  Europe  there  were  not  two  authors  less 
alike.  Hertz  would  have  pleased  Kenelm  Digby, 
and  if  that  romantic  being  had  read  Danish,  the 
poet  of  chivalry  must  have  had  a  niche  in  The 
Broad  Stone  of  Honour.  Hertz's  style  is  delicate 
to  the  verge  of  sweetness;  his  choice  of  words  is 
fantastically  exquisite,  yet  so  apposite  as  to  give 
an  impression  of  the  inevitable.  He  cares  very 
little  for  psychological  exactitude  or  truth  of  ob- 
servation; but  he  is  the  very  type  of  what  we  mean 
by  a  verbal  artist. 

Ibsen  made  acquaintance  with  the  works,  and 
possibly  with  the  person,  of  Hertz,  when  he  was 


62  IBSEN 

in  Copenhagen  in  1852.  There  can  be  no  doubt 
whatever  that,  while  he  was  anxiously  questioning 
his  own  future,  and  conscious  of  crude  faults  in 
Lady  Inger,  he  set  himself,  as  a  task,  to  write  in 
the  manner  of  Hertz.  It  is  difficult  to  doubt 
that  it  was  a  deliberate  exercise,  and  we  see  the 
results  in  The  Feast  at  Solhoug  and  in  Olaf  Lilje- 
krans.  These  two  plays  are  in  ballad-rhyme  and 
prose,  like  Hertz's  romantic  dramas;  there  is  the 
same  determination  to  achieve  the  chivalric  ideal; 
but  the  work  is  that  of  a  disciple,  not  of  a  master. 
Where  Hertz,  with  his  singing-robes  fluttering 
about  him,  dances  without  an  ungraceful  gesture 
through  the  elaborate  and  yet  simple  masque  that 
he  has  set  before  him  to  perform,  Ibsen  has  high 
and  sudden  flights  of  metrical  writing,  but  breaks 
down  surprisingly  at  awkward  intervals,  and  dis- 
plays a  hopeless  inconsistency  between  his  own 
nature  and  the  medium  in  which  he  is  forcing 
himself  to  write.  As  a  proof  that  the  similarity 
between  The  Feast  at  Solhoug  and  Svend  Dyrings 
House  is  accidental,  it  has  been  pointed  out  that 
Ibsen  produced  his  own  play  on  the  Bergen  stage 
in  January,  1856,  and  revived  Hertz's  a  month 
later.  It  might,  surely,  be  more  sensibly  urged 
that  this  fact  shows  how  much  he  was  captivated 
by  the  charm  of  the  Danish  dramatist. 

The  sensible  thing,  in  spite  of  Ibsen's  late  dis- 


LIFE  IN  BERGEN  (1852-57)         63 

claimer,  is  to  suppose  that,  in  the  consciousness 
of  his  crudity  and  inexperience  as  a  writer,  he 
voluntarily  sat  at  the  feet  of  the  one  great  poet 
whom  he  felt  had  most  to  teach  him.  On  the 
boards  at  Bergen,  The  Feast  at  Solhoug  was  a 
success,  while  Olaf  Liljekrans  was  a  failure;  but 
neither  incident  could  have  meant  very  much  to 
Ibsen,  who,  if  there  ever  was  a  poet  who  lived  in 
the  future,  was  waiting  and  watching  for  the 
development  of  his  own  genius.  Slowly,  without 
precocity,  without  even  that  joy  in  strength  of 
maturity  which  comes  to  most  great  writers  be- 
fore the  age  of  thirty,  he  toiled  on  in  a  sort  of 
vacuum.  His  youth  was  one  of  unusual  darkness, 
because  he  had  not  merely  poverty,  isolation, 
citizenship  of  a  remote  and  imperfectly  civilized 
country  to  contend  against,  but  because  his 
critical  sense  was  acute  enough  to  teach  him  that 
he  himself  was  still  unripe,  still  unworthy  of  the 
fame  that  he  thirsted  for.  He  had  not  even  the 
consolation  which  a  proud  confidence  in  them- 
selves gives  to  the  unappreciated  young,  for  in 
his  heart  of  hearts  he  knew  that  he  had  as  yet 
done  nothing  which  deserved  the  highest  praise. 
But  his  imagination  was  expanding  with  a  steady 
sureness,  and  the  long  years  of  his  apprenticeship 
were  drawing  to  a  close. 

Ibsen  was   now,   like  other  young  Norwegian 


64  IBSEN 

poets,  and  particularly  Bjornson,  coming  into  the 
range  of  that  wind  of  nationalistic  inspiration 
which  had  begun  to  blow  down  from  the  moun- 

O 

tains  and  to  fill  every  valley  with  music.  The 
Norwegians  were  discovering  that  they  possessed 
a  wonderful  hidden  treasure  in  their  own  ancient 
poetry  and  legend.  It  was  a  gentle,  clerically 
minded  poet — himself  the  son  of  a  peasant — 
Jorgen  Moe  (1813-82),  long  afterwards  Bishop  of 
Christianssand,  who,  as  far  back  as  1834,  began  to 
collect  from  peasants  the  folk-tales  of  Norway. 
The  childlike  innocence  and  playful  humor  of 
these  stories  were  charming  to  the  mind  of  Moe, 
who  was  fortunately  joined  by  a  stronger  though 
less  delicate  spirit  in  the  person  of  Peter  Christian 
Asbjornsen.  Their  earliest  collection  of  folk-lore 
in  collaboration  appeared  in  1841,  but  it  was  the 
full  edition  of  1856  which  produced  a  national 
sensation,  and  doubtless  awakened  Ibsen  in 
Bergen.  Meanwhile,  in  1853,  M.  B.  Landstad 
had  published  the  earliest  of  his  collections  of 
the  folkeviser,  or  national  songs,  while  L.  M. 
Lindeman  in  the  same  years  (1853-59)  was  pub- 
lishing, in  installments,  the  peasant  melodies  of 
Norway.  Moreover,  Ibsen,  who  read  no  Ice- 
landic, was  studying  the  ancient  sagas  in  the 
faithful  and  vigorous  paraphrase  of  Petersen,  and 
all  combined  to  determine  him  to  make  an  ex- 


Ibsen  in  Dresden,  October,  1873. 


LIFE  IN  BERGEN  (1852-57)         65 

periment   in   a    purely    national    and    archaistic 
direction. 

Ibsen,  whose  practice  is  always  better  than  his 
theory,  has  given  rather  a  confused  account  of 
the  circumstances  that  led  to  the  composition  of 
his  next  play,  The  Fikings  at  Helgeland.  But  it 
is  clear  that  in  looking  through  Petersen  for  a 
subject  which  would  display,  in  broad  and  primi- 
tive forms,  the  clash  of  character  in  an  ancient 
Norwegian  family,  he  fell  upon  "Volsungasaga," 
and  somewhat  rashly  responded  to  its  vigorous 
appeal.  He  thought  that  in  this  particular  epi- 
sode, "the  titanic  conditions  and  occurrences  of 
the  'Nibelungenlied'"  and  other  pro-mediaeval 
legends  had  "been  reduced  to  human  dimen- 
sions." He  believed  that  to  dramatize  such  a 
story  would  lift  what  he  called  "our  national  epic 
material"  to  a  higher  plane.  There  is  one  phrase 
in  his  essay  which  is  very  interesting,  in  the  light 
it  throws  upon  the  object  which  the  author  had 
before  him  in  writing  The  Fikings  at  Helgeland. 
He  says  clearly — and  this  was  intended  as  a  revolt 
against  the  tradition  of  Oehlenschlager — "it  was 
not  my  aim  to  present  our  mythic  world,  but 
simply  our  life  in  primitive  times."  Brandes  says 
of  this  departure  that  it  is  "indeed  a  new  con- 
quest, but,  like  so  many  conquests,  associated  with 
very  extensive  plundering." 


66  IBSEN 

In  turning  to  an  examination  of  The  Vikings, 
the  first  point  which  demands  notice  is  that  Ibsen 
has  gained  a  surprising  mastery  over  the  arts  of 
theatrical  writing  since  we  met  with  him  last. 
There  is  nothing  of  the  lyrical  triviality  of  the 
verse  in  The  Feast  at  Solhoug  about  the  trenchant 
prose  of  The  Vikings,  and  the  crepuscular  dim- 
ness of  Lady  Inger  is  exchanged  for  a  perfect 
lucidity  and  directness.  Whatever  we  may  think 
about  the  theatrical  propriety  of  the  conductor  of 
the  vikings,  there  is  no  question  at  all  as  to  what 
it  is  they  do  and  mean.  Ibsen  has  gained,  and 
for  good,  that  master  quality  of  translucent  pres- 
entation without  which  all  other  stage  gifts  are 
shorn  of  their  value.  When  we  have,  however, 
praised  the  limpidity  of  The  Vikings  at  Helge- 
land,  we  have,  in  honesty,  to  make  several  reser- 
vations in  our  criticism  of  the  author's  choice  of 
a  subject.  It  is  valuable  to  compare  Ibsen's 
treatment  of  Icelandic  family-saga  with  that  of 
William  Morris;  let  us  say,  in  The  Lovers  of 
Gudrun.  That  enchanting  little  epic  deals  with 
an  episode  from  one  of  the  great  Iceland  nar- 
ratives, and  follows  it  much  more  closely  than 
Ibsen's  does.  But  we  are  conscious  of  a  less 
painful  effort  and  of  a  more  human  result.  Mor- 
ris does  successfully  what  Ibsen  unsuccessfully 
aimed  at  doing:  he  translates  the  heroic  and  half- 


LIFE  IN   BERGEN   (1852-57)          67 

fabulous  action  into  terms  that  are  human  and 
credible. 

It  was,  moreover,  an  error  of  judgment  on  the 
part  of  the  Norwegian  playwright  to  make  his 
tragedy  a  mosaic  of  effective  bits  borrowed  hither 
and  thither  from  the  Sagas.  Scandinavian  bibli- 
ography has  toiled  to  show  his  indebtedness  to  this 
tale  and  to  that,  and  he  has  been  accused  of  con- 
cealing his  plagiarisms.  But  to  say  this  is  to  miss 
the  mark.  A  poet  is  at  liberty  to  steal  what  he 
will,  if  only  he  builds  his  thefts  up  into  a  living 
structure  of  his  own.  For  this  purpose,  however, 
it  is  practically  found  that,  owing  perhaps  to  the 
elastic  consistency  of  individual  human  nature, 
it  is  safest  to  stick  to  one  story,  embroidering  and 
developing  it  along  its  own  essential  lines. 

There  is  great  vigor,  however,  in  many  of  the 
scenes  in  The  Vikings.  The  appearance  of 
Hiordis  on  the  stage,  in  the  opening  act,  marks, 
perhaps,  the  first  occasion  on  which  Ibsen  had  put 
forth  his  full  strength  as  a  playwright.  This 
entrance  of  Hiordis  ought  to  be  extremely  ef- 
fective; in  fact,  we  understand,  it  rarely  is.  The 
cause  of  this  disappointment  can  easily  be  dis- 
covered. It  is  the  misfortune  of  The  Vikings 
that  it  is  hardly  to  be  acted  by  mortal  men. 
Hiordis  herself  is  superhuman;  she  has  eaten  the 
heart  of  a  wolf,  she  claims  direct  descent  from  a 


68  IBSEN 

race  of  fighting  giants.  There  is  a  grandeur 
about  the  conception  of  her  form  and  character, 
but  it  is  a  grandeur  which  might  well  daunt  a 
human  actress.  One  can  faintly  imagine  the  part 
being  played  by  Mrs.  Siddons,  with  such  an  ex- 
tremity of  fierceness  and  terror  that  ladies  and 
gentlemen  would  be  carried  out  of  the  theatre  in 
hysterics,  as  in  the  days  of  Byron.  Where  Hiordis 
insults  her  guests,  and  contrives  the  horrid  murder 
of  the  boy  Thorolf  before  their  eyes,  we  have  a 
stage-dilemma  presented  to  us — either  the  actress 
must  treat  the  scene  inadequately,  or  else  intoler- 
ably. Ne  pueros  cor  am  populo  Medea  trucidet,  and 
we  shrink  from  Hiordis  with  a  physical  disgust. 
Her  great  hands  and  shrieking  mouth  are  like 
Bellona's,  and  they  smell  of  blood. 

What  is  true  of  Hiordis  is  true  in  less  degree 
of  all  the  characters  in  The  bikings.  They  are 
"great  beautiful  half-witted  men,"  as  Mr.  Ches- 
terton would  say: 

Our  sea  was  dark  with  dreadful  ships 

Full  of  strange  spoil  and  fire, 
And  hairy  men,  as  strange  as  sin, 
With  horrid  heads,  came  wading  in 

Through  the  long  low  sea-mire. 

This  is  the  other  side  of  the  picture;  this  is 
how  Ornulf  and  his  seven  terrible  sons  must  have 


LIFE  IN   BERGEN   (1852-57)          69 

appeared  to  Kaare  the  peasant,  and  this  is  how, 
to  tell  the  truth,  they  wo*uld  in  real  life  appear 
to  us.  The  persons  in  The  Vikings  at  Helgoland 
are  so  primitive  that  they  scarcely  appeal  to  our 
sense  of  reality.  In  spite  of  all  the  romantic  color 
that  the  poet  has  lavished  upon  them,  and  the 
majestic  sentiments  which  he  has  put  into  their 
mouths,  we  feel  that  the  inhabitants  of  Helge- 
land  must  have  regarded  them  as  those  of  Surbiton 
regarded  the  beings  who  were  shot  down  from 
Mars  in  Mr.  Wells'  blood-curdling  story. 

The  Vikings  at  Helgeland  is  a  work  of  extraor- 
dinary violence  and  agitation.  The  personages 
bark  at  one  another  like  seals  and  roar  like  sea- 
lions;  they  "cry  for  blood,  like  beasts  at  night." 
Ornulf,  the  aged  father  of  a  grim  and  speechless 
clan,  is  sorely  wounded  at  the  beginning  of  the 
play,  but  it  makes  no  difference  to  him;  no  one 
binds  up  his  arm,  but  he  talks,  fights,  travels  as 
before.  We  may  see  here  foreshadowed  various 
features  of  Ibsen's  more  mannered  work.  Here 
is  his  favorite  conventional  tame  man,  since, 
among  the  shouting  heroes,  Gunnar  whimpers 
like  a  Tesman.  Here  is  Ibsen's  favorite  trick  of 
unrequited  self-sacrifice;  it  is  Sigurd,  in  Gunnar's 
armor,  who  kills  the  mystical  white  bear,  but  it 
is  Gunnar  who  reaps  the  advantage.  It  is  only 
fair  to  say  that  there  is  more  than  this  to  applaud 


70  IBSEN 

in  The  Flkings  at  Helgeland;  it  moves  on  a  con- 
sistent and  high  level  of  austere  romantic  beauty. 
Mr.  William  Archer,  who  admires  the  play  more 
than  any  Scandinavian  critic  has  done,  justly 
draws  attention  to  the  nobility  of  Ornulf's  en- 
trance in  the  third  act.  Yet,  on  the  whole,  I 
confess  myself  unable  to  be  surprised  at  the 
severity  with  which  Heiberg  judged  The  Fikings 
at  its  first  appearance,  a  severity  which  must  have 
wounded  Ibsen  to  the  quick. 

The  year  1857  was  one  of  unsettlement  in 
Ibsen's  condition.  The  period  for  which  he  had 
undertaken  to  manage  the  theatre  at  Bergen  had 
now  come  to  a  close,  and  he  was  not  anxious  to 
prolong  it.  He  had  had  enough  of  Bergen,  to 
which  only  one  chain  now  bound  him.  Those 
who  read  the  incidents  of  a  poet's  life  into  the 
pages  of  his  works  may  gratify  their  tendency  by 
seeing  in  the  discussions  between  Dagny  and 
Hiordis  some  echo  of  the  thoughts  which  were 
occupying  Ibsen's  mind  in  relation  to  the  married 
state.  Since  his  death,  the  story  has  been  told  of 
his  love-affair  with  a  very  young  girl,  Rikke 
Hoist,  who  had  attracted  his  notice  by  throwing 
a  bunch  of  wild  flowers  in  his  face,  and  whom  he 
followed  and  desired  to  marry.  Her  father  had 
rejected  the  proposal  with  indignation.  Ibsen  had 
suffered  considerably,  but  this  was,  after  all,  an 


LIFE  IN   BERGEN  (1852-57)          71 

early  and  a  very  fugitive  sentiment,  which  made 
no  deep  impression  on  his  heart,  although  it 
seems  to  have  always  lingered  in  his  memory. 

There  had  followed  a  sentiment  much  deeper 
and  much  more  emphatic.  A  charming,  though 
fragmentary,  set  of  verses,  addressed  in  January, 
1856,  to  Miss  Susannah  Thoresen,  show  that 
already  for  a  long  while  he  had  come  to  regard 
this  girl  of  twenty  as  "the  young  dreaming  en- 
igma," the  possible  solution  of  which  interested 
him  more  than  that  of  any  other  living  problem. 
It  was  more  than  the  conversation  of  a  versifying 
lover  which  made  Ibsen  speak  of  Miss  Thoresen's 
"blossoming  child-soul"  as  the  bourne  of  his  am- 
bitions. In  his  dark  way,  he  was  already  vio- 
lently in  love  with  her. 

The  household  of  her  father,  Hans  Conrad 
Thoresen,  was  the  most  cultivated  in  Bergen.  He 
himself,  the  rector  of  Holy  Cross,  was  a  bookish, 
meditative  man  of  no  particular  initiative,  but  he 
had  married,  as  his  third  wife,  Anna  Maria  Kragh, 
a  Dane  by  birth,  and  for  a  long  time,  with  the 
possible  exception  of  Camilla  Collett,  Wergeland's 
sister,  the  most  active  woman  of  letters  in  Nor- 
way. Mrs.  Thoresen  was  the  step-mother  of 
Susannah,  the  only  child  of  her  husband's  second 
marriage.  Between  Magdalene  Thoresen  and 
Ibsen  a  strong  friendship  had  sprung  up,  which 


72  IBSEN 

lasted  to  the  end  of  their  lives,  and  some  of  Ibsen's 
best  letters  are  those  written  to  his  wife's  step- 
mother. She  worked  hard  for  him  at  the  Bergen 
theatre,  translating  plays  from  the  French,  and 
it  was  during  Ibsen's  management  of  the  theatre 
that  several  of  her  own  pieces  were  produced. 
Her  prose  stories,  in  connection  with  which  her 
name  lives  in  Norwegian  literature,  were  not  yet 
written;  so  long  as  Ibsen  was  at  her  side,  her 
ideas  seem  to  have  been  concentrated  on  the 
stage.  Constant  communication  with  this  charm- 
ing woman,  only  nine  years  his  senior,  and  much 
his  superior  in  conventional  culture,  must  have 
been  a  school  of  refinement  to  the  crude  and 
powerful  young  poet.  And  now  the  wise  Mag- 
dalene appeared  to  him  in  a  new  light,  dedicating 
to  him  the  best  treasure  of  the  family  circle,  the 
gay  and  yet  mysterious  Susannah. 

While  he  was  writing  The  bikings  at  Helge- 
land,  and  courting  Susannah  Thoresen,  Ibsen 
received  what  seemed  a  timely  invitation  to  settle 
in  Christiania  as  director  of  the  Norwegian 
Theatre;  he  returned,  thereupon,  to  the  capital 
in  the  summer  of  1857,  after  an  absence  of  six 
years.  Now  began  another  period  of  six  years 
more,  these  the  most  painful  in  Ibsen's  life,  when, 
as  Halvorsen  has  said,  he  had  to  fight  not  merely 
for  the  existence  of  himself  and  his  family,  but  for 


LIFE  IN  BERGEN  (1852-57)          73 

the  very  existence  of  Norwegian  poetry  and  the 
Norwegian  stage.  This  struggle  was  an  exces- 
sively distressing  one.  He  had  left  Bergen  crippled 
with  debts,  and  his  marriage  (June  26,  1856) 
weighed  him  down  with  further  responsibilities. 
The  Norwegian  Theatre  at  Christiania  was  a 
secondary  house,  ill-supported  by  its  patrons, 
often  tottering  at  the  brink  of  bankruptcy,  and 
so  primitive  was  the  situation  of  literature  in  the 
country  that  to  attempt  to  live  by  poetry  and 
drama  was  to  court  starvation.  His  slender 
salary  was  seldom  paid,  and  never  in  full.  The 
only  published  volume  of  Ibsen's  which  had  (up 
to  1863)  sold  at  all  was  The  Warriors,  by  which  he 
had  made  in  all  227  specie  dollars  (or  about  £25). 
The  Christiania  he  had  come  to,  however,  was 
not  that  which  he  had  left.  In  many  directions 
it  had  developed  rapidly.  From  an  intellectual 
point  of  view,  the  labors  of  the  nationalists  had 
made  themselves  felt;  the  folk-lore  of  Landstad, 
Moe  and  Asbjornsen  had  impressed  young  imag- 
inations. In  some  of  its  forms  the  development 
was  unpleasing  and  discouraging  to  Ibsen;  the 
success  of  the  blank-verse  tragedies  of  Andreas 
Munch  (Salomon  de  Caus,  1855;  Lord  William 
Russell,  1857)  was,  for  instance,  an  irritating  step 
in  the  wrong  direction.  The  new-born  school  of 
prose  fiction,  with  Bjornson  as  its  head  (Synriove 


74  IBSEN 

Solbakken,  1857;  Arne,  1858),  with  Camilla 
Collett's  Prefect's  Daughters,  1855,  as  its  herald; 
with  Ostgaard's  sketches  of  peasant  life  and 
humors  in  the  mountains  (1852) — all  this  was 
a  direct  menace  to  the  popularity  of  the  national 
stage,  offering  an  easy  and  alluring  alternative  for 
home-loving  citizens.  Was  it  certain  that  the 
classic  Danish,  which  alone  Ibsen  cared  to  write, 
would  continue  to  be  the  language  of  the  culti- 
vated classes  in  Norway  ?  Here  was  Ivar  Aasen 
(in  1853)  showing  that  the  irritating  landsmaal 
could  be  used  for  prose  and  verse. 

Wherever  he  turned  Ibsen  saw  increased  vitality, 
but  in  shapes  that  were  either  useless  or  antag- 
onistic to  himself,  and  all  that  was  harsh  and 
saturnine  in  his  nature  awakened.  We  see  Ibsen, 
at  this  moment  of  his  life,  like  Shakespeare  in 
his  darkest  hour,  "in  disgrace  with  fortune  and 
men's  eyes,"  unappreciated  and  ready  to  doubt 
the  reality  of  his  own  genius;  and  murmuring  to 
himself: — 

Wishing  me  like  to  one  more  rich  in  hope, 

Featured  like  him,  like  him  with  friends  possess'd, 

Desiring  this  man's  art,  and  that  man's  scope. 
With  what  I  most  enjoy  contented  least. 

How  little  his  greatness  was  perceived  in  the 
Christiania  literary  coteries  may  be  gathered  from 


LIFE  IN   BERGEN   (1852-57)          75 

the  little  fact  that  the  species  of  official  anthology 
of  Modern  Norwegian  Poets,  published  in  1859, 
though  it  netted  the  shallows  of  national  song 
very  closely,  contained  not  a  line  by  the  author 
of  the  lovely  lyrics  in  The  Feast  at  Solhoug.  It 
was  at  this  low  and  miserable  moment  that  Ibsen's 
talent  suddenly  took  wings;  he  conceived,  in  the 
summer  of  1858,  what  finally  became,  five  years 
later,  his  first  acknowledged  masterpiece,  and 
perhaps  the  most  finished  of  all  his  writings,  the 
sculptural  tragedy  of  The  Pretenders. 

The  Pretenders  (Kongsemnerne,  properly  stuff 
from  which  Kings  can  be  made)  is  the  earliest  of 
the  plays  of  Ibsen  in  which  the  psychological 
interest  is  predominant,  and  in  which  there  is  no 
attempt  to  disguise  the  fact.  Nothing  that  has 
since  been  written  about  this  drama,  the  very 
perfection  of  which  is  baffling  to  criticism,  has 
improved  upon  the  impression  which  Georg 
Brandes  received  from  it  when  he  first  read  it  forty 
years  ago.  The  passage  is  classic,  and  deserves  to 
be  cited,  if  only  as  perhaps  the  very  earliest 
instance  in  which  the  genius  of  Ibsen  was  re- 
warded by  the  analysis  of  a  great  critic.  Brandes 
wrote  (in  1867): — 

What  is  it  that  The  Pretenders  treats  of?  Looked  at 
simply,  it  is  an  old  story.  We  all  know  the  tale  of  Aladdin 
and  Nureddin,  the  simple  legend  in  the  Arabian  Nights,  and 


76  IBSEN 

our  great  poet's  [Oehlenschlager's]  incomparable  poem. 
In  The  Pretenders  two  figures  again  stand  opposed  to  one 
another  as  the  superior  and  the  inferior  being,  an  Aladdin 
and  a  Nureddin  nature.  It  is  towards  this  contrast  that 
Ibsen  has  hitherto  unconsciously  directed  his  endeavors, 
just  as  Nature  feels  her  way  in  her  blind  preliminary  attempts 
to  form  her  types.  Hakon  and  Skule  are  pretenders  to  the 
same  throne,  scions  of  royalty  out  of  whom  a  king  may  be 
made.  But  the  first  is  the  incarnation  of  fortune,  victory, 
right  and  confidence;  the  second — the  principal  figure  in 
the  play,  masterly  in  its  truth  and  originality — is  the  brooder, 
a  prey  to  inward  struggle  and  endless  distrust,  brave  and 
ambitious,  with  perhaps  every  qualification  and  claim  to 
be  king,  but  lacking  the  inexpressible,  impalpable  somewhat 
that  would  give  a  value  to  all  the  rest — the  wonderful  Lamp. 
"I  am  a  king's  arm,"  he  says,  " mayhap  a  king's  brain  as 
well;  but  Hakon  is  the  whole  king."  "You  have  wisdom 
and  courage,  and  all  noble  gifts  of  the  mind,"  says  Hakon  to 
him;  "you  are  born  to  stand  nearest  a  king,  but  not  to  be  a 
king  yourself." 

To  a  poet  the  achievements  of  his  greatest 
contemporaries  in  their  common  art  have  all  the 
importance  of  high  deeds  in  statesmanship  and 
war.  It  is,  therefore,  by  no  means  extravagant  to 
see  in  the  noble  emulation  of  the  two  dukes  in 
The  Pretenders  some  reflection  of  Ibsen's  attitude 
to  the  youthful  and  brilliant  Bjornson.  The 
luminous  self-reliance,  the  ardor  and  confidence 
and  good  fortune  of  Bjornson-Hakon  could  not 
but  offer  a  violent  contrast  with  the  gloom  and 


LIFE   IN   BERGEN   (1852-57)          77 

hesitation,  the  sick  revulsions  of  hope  and  final 
lack  of  conviction,  of  Ibsen-Skule.  It  was 
Bjornson's  "  belt  of  strength,"  as  it  was  Hakon's, 
that  he  had  utter  belief  in  himself,  and  with  this 
his  rival  could  not  yet  girdle  himself.  "The 
luckiest  man  is  the  greatest  man,"  says  Bishop 
Nicholas  in  the  play,  and  Bjornson  seemed  in 
these  melancholy  years  as  lucky  as  Ibsen  was  un- 
lucky. But  the  Bishop's  views  were  not  wide 
enough,  and  the  end  was  not  yet. 


CHAPTER  IV 
THE  SATIRES  (1857-67) 

TEMPERAMENT  and  environment  combined  at 
the  period  we  have  now  reached  to  turn  Ibsen  into 
a  satirist.  It  was  during  his  time  of  Sturm  und 
Drang,  from  1857  to  1864,  that  the  harshest  ele- 
ments in  his  nature  were  awakened,  and  that  he 
became  one  who  loved  to  lash  the  follies  of  his 
age.  With  the  advent  of  prosperity  and  recog- 
nition this  phase  melted  away,  leaving  Ibsen  with- 
out illusions  and  without  much  pity,  but  no  longer 
the  scourge  of  his  fellow-citizens.  Although  The 
Pretenders,  a  work  of  dignified  and  polished  aloof- 
ness, was  not  completed  until  1863,  it  really  be- 
longs to  the  earlier  and  more  experimental  section 
of  Ibsen's  works,  and  is  so  completely  the  out- 
come and  the  apex  of  his  national  studies  that  it 
has  seemed  best  to  consider  it  with  The  Ft  kings 
at  Helgeland,  in  spite  of  its  immense  advance 
upon  that  drama.  But  we  must  now  go  back  a 
year,  and  take  up  an  entirely  new  section  which 
overlaps  the  old,  namely,  that  of  Ibsen's  satires 
in  dramatic  rhyme. 

With  regard  to  the  adoption  of  that  form  of 
78 


THE  SATIRES   (1857-67)  79 

poetic  art,  a  great  difference  existed  between 
Norwegian  and  English  taste,  and  this  must  be 
borne  in  mind.  Almost  exactly  at  the  date  when 
Ibsen  was  inditing  the  sharp  couplets  of  his  Love's 
Comedy,  Tennyson,  in  Sea  Dreams,  was  giving 
voice  to  the  English  abandonment  of  satire— 
which  had  been  rampant  in  the  generation  of 
Byron — in  the  famous  words: — 

I  loathe  it:  he  had  never  kindly  heart, 
Nor  ever  cared  to  better  his  own  kind, 
Who  first  wrote  satire,  with  no  pity  in  it. 

What  England  repudiated,  Norway  comprehended, 
and  in  certain  hands  enjoyed.  Polemical  litera- 
ture, if  seldom  of  a  high  class,  was  abundant  and 
was  much  appreciated.  The  masterpiece  of  mod- 
ern Norwegian  poetry  was,  still,  the  satiric  cycle 
of  Welhaven.  In  ordinary  controversy,  the  tone 
was  more  scathing,  the  bludgeon  was  whirled 
more  violently,  than  English  taste  at  that  period 
could  endure.  Those  whom  Ibsen  designed  to 
crush  had  not  minced  their  own  words.  The 
press  was  violence  itself,  and  was  not  tempered 
with  justice;  when  the  poet  looked  round  he  saw 
"afflicted  virtue  insolently  stabbed  with  all  man- 
ner of  reproaches,"  as  Dryden  said. 

Yet  it  was  not  an  age  of  gross  and  open  vices; 
manners  were  not  flagitious,  they  were  merely  of 


8o  IBSEN 

a  nauseous  insipidity.  Ibsen,  flown  with  anger  as 
with  wine,  could  find  no  outrageous  offences  to 
lash,  and  all  he  could  invite  the  age  to  do  was  to 
laugh  at  certain  conventions  and  to  reconsider 
some  prejudicated  opinions.  He  had  to  be  pun- 
gent, not  openly  ferocious;  he  had  to  be  sarcastic 
and  to  treat  the  current  code  of  morals  as  a  jest. 
He  found  the  society  around  him  excessively 
distasteful  to  him,  but  there  were  no  crying  evils 
of  a  political  or  ethical  kind  to  be  stigmatized. 
What  was  open  to  him  was  what  an  old  writer  of 
our  own  defined  as  "a  sharp,  well-mannered  way 
of  laughing  a  folly  out  of  countenance." 

Unfortunately,  the  people  laughed  at  will  never 
consent  to  think  the  way  well  mannered,  and 
Ibsen  was  bitterly  blamed  for  "want  of  taste," 
that  vaguest  and  most  insidious  of  accusations. 
We  are  told  that  he  began  his  enterprise  in  prose,1 
but  found  that  too  stiff  and  bald  a  medium  for  a 
satire  on  the  social  crudity  of  Norway.  In  writing 
satire,  it  is  all-important  that  the  form  should  be 
adequate,  and  at  this  time  Ibsen  had  not  reached 
the  impeccable  perfection  of  his  later  colloquial 
prose.  He  started  Love's  Comedy,  therefore,  anew, 
and  he  wrote  it  as  a  pamphlet  in  rhyme.  It  is 
not  certain  that  he  had  any  very  definite  idea  of 

1  "Svanhild:   a  Comedy  in  three  acts  and  in  prose:    1860,"  is  un- 
derstood to  exist  still  in  manuscript. 


THE  SATIRES   (1857-67)  81 

the  line  which  his  attack  should  take.  He  was 
very  poor,  very  sore,  very  uncomfortable,  and  he 
was  easily  convinced  that  the  times  were  out  of 
joint.  Then  he  observed  that  if  there  was  any- 
thing that  the  Norwegian  upper  classes  prided 
themselves  upon  it  was  their  conduct  of  betrothal 
and  marriage.  Plato  had  said  that  the  familiarity 
of  young  persons  before  marriage  prevented 
enmity  and  disappointment  in  later  years,  that  it 
was  useful  to  know  the  peculiarities  of  tempera- 
ment beforehand,  and  so,  being  accustomed  to 
them,  to  discount  them.  But  Ibsen  was  not  of  this 
opinion,  or  rather,  perhaps,  he  did  not  choose  to  be. 
The  extremely  slow  and  public  method  of  betrothal 
in  the  North  gave  him  his  first  opportunity. 

It  is  with  a  song,  in  the  original  one  of  the  most 
delicious  of  his  lyrics,  that  he  opens  the  cam- 
paign. To  a  miscellaneous  party  of  Philistines 
circled  around  the  tea-table,  "all  sober  and  all 
"  the  rebellious  hero  sings : — 

In  the  sunny  orchard-closes, 

While  the  warblers  sing  and  swing, 
Care  not  whether  blustering  Autumn 

Break  the  promises  of  Spring; 
Rose  and  white  the  apple-blossom 

Hides  you  from  the  sultry  sky; 
Let  it  flutter,  blown  and  scattered, 

On  the  meadow  by  and  by. 


82  IBSEN 

In  the  sexual  struggle,  that  is  to  say,  the  lovers 
should  not  pause  to  consider  the  worldly  advan- 
tages of  their  match,  but  should  fly  in  secret  to 
each  other's  arms.  By  the  law  of  battle,  the 
female  should  be  snatched  to  the  conqueror's 
saddle-bow,  and  ridden  away  with  into  the  night, 
not  subjected  to  the  jokes  and  the  good  advice 
and  the  impertinent  congratulations  of  the  clan. 
Young  Lochinvar  does  not  wait  to  ask  the  counsel 
of  the  bride's  cousins,  nor  to  run  the  gantlet  of 
her  aunts;  he  fords  the  Esk  river  with  her,  where 
ford  there  is  none.  Ibsen  is  in  favor  of  the 
manage  de  convenance,  which  suppresses,  with- 
out favor,  the  absurdity  of  love-matches.  Above 
all,  anything  is  better  than  the  publicity,  the 
meddling  and  long-drawn  exposure  of  betrothal, 
which  kills  the  fine  delicacy  of  love,  as  birds  are 
apt  to  break  their  own  eggs  if  intruding  hands 
have  touched  them. 

This  is  the  central  point  in  Loves  Comedy,  but 
there  is  much  beside  this  in  its  reckless  satire  on 
the  "sanctities"  of  domestic  life.  The  burden 
of  monogamy  is  frivolously  dealt  with,  and  the 
impertinent  poet  touches  with  levity  upon  the 
question  of  the  duration  of  marriage: 

With  my  living,  with  my  singing, 
I  will  tear  the  hedges  down! 


THE  SATIRES   (1857-67)  83 

Sweep  the  grass  and  heap  the  blossom! 

Let  it  shrivel,  pale  and  blown! 
Throw  the  wicket  wide!     Sheep,  cattle, 

Let  them  browse  among  the  best! 
I  broke  off  the  flowers;  what  matter 

Who  may  graze  among  the  rest! 

Love's  Comedy  is  perhaps  the  most  diverting  of 
Ibsen's  works;  it  is  certainly  the  most  imperti- 
nent. If  there  was  one  class  in  Norwegian  so- 
ciety which  was  held  to  be  above  criticism  it  was 
the  clerical.  A  prominent  character  in  Ibsen's 
comedy  is  the  Rev.  Mr.  Strawman,  a  gross, 
unctuous  and  uxorious  priest,  blameless  and  dull, 
upon  whose  inert  body  the  arrows  of  satire  con- 
verge. This  was  never  forgotten  and  long  was 
unforgiven.  As  late  as  1866  the  Storthing  re- 
fused a  grant  to  Ibsen  definitely  on  the  ground 
of  the  scandal  caused  by  his  sarcastic  portrait  of 
Pastor  Strawman.  But  the  gentler  sex,  to  which 
every  poet  looks  for  an  audience,  was  not  less 
deeply  outraged  by  the  want  of  indulgence  which 
he  had  shown  for  all  forms  of  amorous  senti- 
ment, although  Ibsen  had  really,  through  his 
satire  on  the  methods  of  betrothal,  risen  to  some- 
thing like  a  philosophical  examination  of  the 
essence  of  love  itself. 

To  Brandes,  who  reproached  him  for  not  re- 
cording the  history  of  ideal  engagements,  and  who 


84  IBSEN 

remarked,  "You  know,  there  are  sound  potatoes 
and  rotten  potatoes  in  this  world,"  Ibsen  cynically 
replied,  "I  am  afraid  none  of  the  sound  ones  have 
come  under  my  notice";  and  when  Guldstad  proves 
to  the  beautiful  Svanhild  the  paramount  impor- 
tance of  creature  comforts,  the  last  word  of  dis- 
trust in  the  sustaining  power  of  love  had  been 
said.  The  popular  impression  of  Ibsen  as  an 
"immoral"  writer  seems  to  be  primarily  founded 
on  the  paradox  and  fireworks  of  Love's  Comedy. 

Much  might  be  forgiven  to  a  man  so  wretched 
as  Ibsen  was  in  1862,  and  more  to  a  poet  so  lively, 
brilliant  and  audacious  in  spite  of  his  misfortunes. 
These  now  gathered  over  his  head  and  threatened 
to  submerge  him  altogether.  He  was  perhaps 
momentarily  saved  by  the  publication  of  Terje 
Vigen,  which  enjoyed  a  solid  popularity.  This  is 
the  principal  and,  indeed,  almost  the  only  instance 
in  Ibsen's  works  of  what  the  Northern  critics  call 
"epic,"  but  what  we  less  ambitiously  know  as  the 
tale  in  verse.  Terje  Vigen  will  never  be  trans- 
lated successfully  into  English,  for  it  is  written, 
with  brilliant  lightness  and  skill,  in  an  adaptation 
of  the  Norwegian  ballad-measure  which  it  is  im- 
possible to  reproduce  with  felicity  in  our  lan- 
guage. 

Among  Ibsen's  writings  Terje  Vigen  is  unique 
as  a  piece  of  pure  sentimentality  carried  right 


THE  SATIRES   (1857-67)  85 

through  without  one  divagation  into  irony  or 
pungency.  It  is  the  story  of  a  much-injured 
and  revengeful  Norse  pilot,  who,  having  the 
chance  to  drown  his  old  enemies,  Milord  and 
Milady,  saves  them  at  the  mute  appeal  of  their 
blue-eyed  English  baby.  Terje  Vigen  is  a  master- 
piece of  what  we  may  define  as  the  "  dash-away- 
a-manly-tear"  class  of  narrative.  It  is  extremely 
well  written  and  picturesque,  but  the  wonder  is 
that,  of  all  people  in  the  world,  Ibsen  should  have 
written  it. 

His  short  lyric  poems  of  this  period  betray 
much  more  clearly  the  real  temper  of  the  man. 
They  are  filled  full  and  brimming  over  with  long- 
ing and  impatience,  with  painful  passion  and  with 
hope  deferred.  It  is  in  the  strident  lyrics  Ibsen 
wrote  between  1857  and  1863  that  we  can  best 
read  the  record  of  his  mind,  and  share  its  exas- 
perations, and  wonder  at  its  elasticity.  The 
series  of  sonnets  In  a  Picture  Gallery  is  a  strangely 
violent  confession  of  distrust  in  his  own  genius; 
the  Epistle  to  H.  0.  Blom  a  candid  admission  of 
his  more  than  distrust  in  the  talent  and  honesty 
of  others.  It  was  the  peculiarity  and  danger  of 
Ibsen's  position  that  he  represented  no  one  but 
himself.  For  instance,  the  liberty  of  many  of 
the  expressions  in  Love's  Comedy  led  those  who 
were  beginning  a  movement  in  favor  of  the 


86  IBSEN 

emancipation  of  women  to  believe  that  Ibsen  was 
in  sympathy  with  them,  but  he  was  not.  All 
through  his  life,  although  his  luminous  penetra- 
tion into  character  led  him  to  be  scrupulously  fair 
in  his  analysis  of  female  character,  he  was  never 
a  genuine  supporter  of  the  extension  of  public 
responsibility  to  the  sex.  A  little  later  (in  1869), 
when  John  Stuart  Mill's  Subjection  of  Women 
produced  a  sensation  in  Scandinavia,  and  met  with 
many  enthusiastic  supporters,  Ibsen  coldly  re- 
served his  opinion.  He  was  always  an  observer, 
always  a  clinical  analyst  at  the  bedside  of  society, 
never  a  prophet,  never  a  propagandist. 

His  troubles  gathered  upon  him.  Neither 
theatre  consented  to  act  Love's  Comedy,  and  it 
would  not  even  have  been  printed  but  for  the  zeal 
of  the  young  novelist  Jonas  Lie,  who,  to  his  great 
honor,  bought  for  about  £35  the  right  to  pub- 
lish it  as  a  supplement  to  a  newspaper  that  he  was 
editing.  Then  the  storm  broke  out;  the  press 
was  unanimously  adverse,  and  in  private  circles 
abuse  amounted  almost  to  a  social  taboo.  In 
1862  the  second  theatre  became  bankrupt,  and 
Ibsen  was  thrown  on  the  world,  the  most  unpopu- 
lar man  of  his  day,  and  crippled  with  debts.  It 
is  true  that  he  was  engaged  at  the  Christiania 
Theatre  at  a  nominal  salary  of  about  a  pound  a 
week,  but  he  could  not  live  on  that.  In  August, 


THE  SATIRES   (1857-67)  87 

1860,  he  had  made  a  pathetic  appeal  to  the 
Government  for  a  digter-gage^  a  payment  to  a 
poet,  such  as  is  freely  given  to  talent  in  the  North- 
ern countries.  Sums  were  voted  to  Bjornson 
and  Vinje,  but  to  Ibsen  not  a  penny.  By  some 
influence,  however,  for  he  was  not  without  friends, 
he  was  granted  in  March,  1862,  a  travelling  grant 
of  less  than  £20  to  enable  him  to  wander  for  two 
months  in  western  Hardanger  and  the  districts 
around  the  Sognefjord  for  the  purpose  of  collect- 
ing folk-songs  and  legends.  The  results  of  this 
journey  were  prepared  for  publication,  but  never 
appeared.  This  interesting  excursion,  however, 
has  left  its  mark  stamped  broadly  upon  Brand  and 
Peer  Gynt. 

All  through  1863  his  condition  was  critical. 
He  determined  that  his  only  hope  was  to  exile 
himself  definitely  from  Norway,  which  had  be- 
come too  hot  to  hold  him.  Various  private 
friends  generously  helped  him  over  this  dreadful 
time  of  adversity,  earning  a  gratitude  which,  if 
it  was  not  expansive,  was  lifelong.  Very  grudg- 
ing recognition  of  his  gifts  was  at  length  made 
by  the  Government  in  the  shape  of  another 
trifling  travelling  grant  (March,  1863),  again  a 
handsome  sum  being  awarded  to  Bjornson,  his 
popular  rival.  In  May  Ibsen  applied,  in  despair, 
to  the  King  himself,  who  conferred  upon  him  a 


88  IBSEN 

small  pension  of  £90  a  year,  which  for  the  imme- 
diate future  stood  between  this  great  poet  and 
starvation.  The  news  of  it  was  received  in 
Christiania  by  the  press  in  terms  of  despicable 
insult. 

But  in  June  of  this  annee  terrible  Ibsen  had  a 
flash  of  happiness.  He  was  invited  down  to 
Bergen  to  the  fifth  great  "Festival  of  Song,"  a 
national  occurrence,  and  he  and  his  poems  met 
with  a  warm  reception.  Moreover,  foe  found  his 
brilliant  antagonist,  Bjornson,  at  Bergen  on  a  like 
errand,  and  renewed  an  old  friendship  with  this 
warm-hearted  and  powerful  man  of  genius, 
destined  to  play  through  life  the  part  of  Hakon 
to  Ibsen's  Skule.  They  spent  much  of  the  sub- 
sequent winter  together.  As  Halvdan  Koht  has 
excellently  said:  "Their  intercourse  brought 
them  closer  to  each  other  than  they  had  ever  been 
before.  They  felt  that  they  were  inspired  by  the 
same  ideas  and  the  same  hopes,  and  they  suffered 
the  same  bitter  disappointments.  With  anguish 
they  watched  the  Danish  brother-nation's  des- 
perate struggle  against  the  superior  power  of 
Germany,  and  saw  a  province  with  a  population 
of  Scandinavian  race  and  speech  taken  from 
Denmark  and  incorporated  in  a  foreign  kingdom, 
whilst  the  Norwegian  and  Swedish  kinsmen,  in 
spite  of  solemn  promises,  refrained  from  yielding 


From   a   drawing   by   Gustav    Laerum. 


THE  SATIRES   (1857-67)  89 

any  assistance."  An  attack  on  Holstein  (Decem- 
ber 22,  1863)  had  introduced  the  Second  Danish 
War,  to  which  a  disastrous  and  humiliating  ter- 
mination was  brought  in  the  following  August. 

In  April,  1864,  Ibsen  took  the  momentous  step 
of  quitting  his  native  country.  He  entered  Copen- 
hagen at  the  dark  hour  when  Schleswig  as  well 
as  Holstein  had  been  abandoned,  and  when  the 
citadel  of  Diippel  alone  stood  between  Denmark 
and  ruin.  His  agonized  sympathy  may  be  read 
in  the  indignant  lyrics  of  that  spring.  A  fort- 
night later  he  set  out,  by  Lubeck  and  Trieste,  for 
Rome,  where  he  had  now  determined  to  reside. 
He  reached  that  city  in  due  time,  and  sank  with 
ineffable  satisfaction  into  the  arms  of  its  antique 
repose.  "Here  at  last,"  he  wrote  to  Bjdrnson, 
"there  is  blessed  peace,"  and  he  settled  himself 
down  to  the  close  contemplation  of  poetry. 

The  change  from  the  severities  of  an  inter- 
minable Northern  winter  to  the  glow  and  splen- 
dor of  Italy  acted  on  the  poet's  spirit  like  an 
enchantment.  Ibsen  came,  another  Pilgrim  of 
Eternity,  to  Rome's  "azure  sky,  flowers,  ruins, 
statues,  music,"  and  at  first  the  contrast  between 
the  crudity  he  had  left  and  the  glory  he  had 
found  was  almost  intolerable.  He  could  not 
work;  all  he  did  was  to  lie  in  the  flushed  air  and 
become  as  a  little  child.  There  has  scarcely  been 


90  IBSEN 

another  example  of  a  writer  of  the  first  class  who, 
deeply  solicitous  about  beauty,  but  debarred  from 
all  enjoyment  of  it  until  his  thirty-seventh  year, 
has  been  suddenly  dipped,  as  if  into  a  magic 
fountain,  into  the  heart  of  unclouded  loveliness 
without  transition  or  preparation.  Shelley  and 
Keats  were  dead  long  before  they  reached  the  age 
at  which  Ibsen  broke  free  from  his  prison-house 
of  ice,  while  Byron,  in  the  same  year  of  his  life, 
was  closing  his  romantic  career. 

Ibsen's  earliest  impressions  of  what  these  poets 
had  become  accustomed  to  at  a  ductile  age  were 
contradictory  and  even  incoherent.  The  passion 
of  pagan  antiquity  for  a  long  while  bewildered 
him.  He  wandered  among  the  vestiges  of  antique 
art,  unable  to  perceive  their  relation  to  modern  life, 
or  their  original  significance.  He  missed  the 
impress  of  the  individual  on  classic  sculpture,  as 
he  had  missed  it — the  parallel  is  strange,  but  his 
own — on  the  Eddaic  poems  of  ancient  Iceland. 
He  liked  a  lyric  or  a  statue  to  speak  to  him  of  the 
man  who  made  it.  He  felt  more  at  home  with 
Bernini  among  sculptors  and  with  Bramante 
among  architects  than  with  artists  of  a  more  archaic 
type.  Shelley,  we  may  remember,  labored  under  a 
similar  heresy;  to  each  of  these  poets  the  attrac- 
tiveness of  individual  character  overpowered  the 
languid  flavor  of  the  age  in  which  the  artist  had 


THE  SATIRES   (1857-67)  91 

flourished.  Ibsen's  admiration  of  a  certain  over- 
praised monument  of  Italian  architecture  would 
not  be  worth  recording  but  for  the  odd  vigor 
with  which  he  adds  that  the  man  who  made  that 
might  have  made  the  moon  in  his  leisure  moments. 
During  the  first  few  months  of  Ibsen's  life  in 
Rome  all  was  chaos  in  his  mind.  He  was  plunged 
in  stupefaction  at  the  beauties  of  nature,  the 
amenities  of  mankind,  the  interpenetration  of  such 
a  life  with  such  an  art  as  he  had  never  dreamed  of 
and  could  yet  but  dimly  comprehend.  In  Septem- 
ber, 1864,  he  tells  Bjornson  that  he  is  at  work 
on  a  poem  of  considerable  length.  This  must 
have  been  the  first  draft  of  Brand,  which  was 
begun,  we  know,  as  a  narrative,  or  as  the  Northerns 
call  it,  an  "epic"  poem;  although  a  sketch  for 
the  Julianas  Apostata  was  already  forming  in  the 
back  of  his  head,  as  a  subject  which  would, 
sooner  or  later,  demand  poetic  treatment.  He 
had  left  his  wife  and  little  son  in  Copenhagen, 
but  at  the  beginning  of  October  they  joined  him 
in  Rome.  The  family  lived  on  an  income  which 
seems  almost  incredibly  small,  a  maximum  of 
40  scudi  a  month.  But  it  was  a  different  thing 
to  be  hungry  in  Christiania  and  in  Rome,  and 
Ibsen  makes  no  complaints.  A  sort  of  blessed 
languor  had  fallen  upon  him  after  all  his  afflic- 
tions. He  would  loll  through  half  his  days 


92  IBSEN 

among  the  tombs  on  the  Via  Latina,  or  would 
loiter  for  hours  and  hours  along  the  Appian  Way. 
It  took  him  weeks  to  summon  energy  to  visit 
S.  Pietro  in  Vincoli,  although  he  knew  that 
Michelangelo's  "Moses"  was  there,  and  though 
he  was  weary  with  longing  to  see  it.  All  the  tense 
chords  of  Ibsen's  nature  were  loosened.  His  soul 
was  recovering,  through  a  long  and  blissful  con- 
valescence, from  the  aching  maladies  of  its  youth. 
He  took  some  part  in  the  society  of  those 
Scandinavian  writers,  painters  and  sculptors  who 
gathered  in  Rome  through  the  years  of  their 
distress.  But  only  one  of  them  attracted  him 
strongly,  the  young  Swedish  lyrical  poet,  Count 
Carl  Snoilsky,  then  the  hope  and  already  even  the 
glory  of  his  country.  There  was  some  quaint 
diversity  between  the  rude  and  gloomy  Norwegian 
dramatist,  already  middle-aged,  and  the  full- 
blooded,  sparkling  Swedish  diplomatist  of  twenty- 
three,  rich,  flattered,  and  already  as  famous  for 
his  fashionable  bonnes  fortunes  as  Byron.  But  two 
things  Snoilsky  and  Ibsen  had  in  common,  a 
passionate  enthusiasm  for  their  art,  and  a  rebel- 
lious attitude  towards  their  immediate  precur- 
sors in  it.  Each,  in  his  own  way,  was  the  leader 
of  a  new  school.  The  friendship  of  Ibsen  and 
Snoilsky  was  a  permanent  condition  for  the  rest  of 
their  lives,  for  it  was  founded  on  a  common  basis. 


THE  SATIRES   (1857-67)  93 

A  few  years  later  the  writer  of  these  pages  re- 
ceived an  amusing  impression  of  Ibsen  at  this 
period  from  the  Danish  poet,  Christian  Molbech, 
who  was  also  in  Rome  in  1865  and  onwards. 
Ibsen  wandering  silently  about  the  streets,  his 
hands  plunged  far  into  the  pockets  of  his  in- 
variable jacket  of  faded  velveteen,  Ibsen  killing 
conversation  by  his  sudden  moody  appearances 
at  the  Scandinavian  Club,  Ibsen  shattering  the 
ideals  of  the  painters  and  the  enthusiasms  of  the 
antiquaries  by  a  running  fire  of  sarcastic  paradox, 
this  is  mainly  what  the  somewhat  unsympathetic 
Molbech  was  not  unwilling  to  reproduce.  He 
painted  a  more  agreeable  Ibsen  when  he  spoke  of 
his  summer  flights  to  the  Alban  Hills,  planned  on 
terms  of  the  most  prudent  reference  to  resources 
which  seemed  ever  to  be  expected  and  never  to 
arrive.  Nevertheless,  under  the  vines  in  front  of 
some  inn  at  Genzano  or  Albano,  Ibsen  would  duly 
be  discovered,  placid  and  dreamy,  always  self- 
sufficient  and  self-contained,  but  not  unwilling 
to  exchange,  over  a  flask  of  thin  wine,  common- 
places with  a  Danish  friend.  It  was  at  Ariccia, 
in  one  of  these  periods  of  villegiatura,  during  the 
summer  and  autumn  of  1865,  that  Brand,  which 
had  long  been  under  considerature,  suddenly  took 
final  shape,  and  was  written  throughout,  without 
pause  or  hesitation.  In  July  the  poet  put  every- 


94  IBSEN 

thing  else  aside  to  begin  it,  and  before  the  end  of 
September  he  had  completed  it. 

Brand  placed  Ibsen  at  a  bound  among  the 
greatest  European  poets  of  his  age.  The  advance 
over  the  sculptural  perfection  of  The  Pretenders 
and  the  graceful  wit  of  Love's  Comedy  was  so 
great  as  to  be  startling.  Nothing  but  the  veil  of 
a  foreign  language,  which  the  best  translations 
are  powerless  to  tear  away  from  noble  verse,  pre- 
vented this  mastery  from  being  perceived  at 
once.  In  Scandinavia,  where  that  veil  did  not 
exist,  for  those  who  had  eyes  to  see,  and  who  were 
not  blinded  by  prejudice,  it  was  plain  that  a  very 
great  writer  had  arisen  in  Norway  at  last.  Bjorn- 
son  had  seemed  to  slip  ahead  of  Ibsen;  his  Sigurd 
Slemle  (1862)  was  a  riper  work  than  the  elder 
friend  had  produced;  but  Mary  Stuart  in  Scot- 
land (1864)  had  marked  a  step  backward,  and  now 
Ibsen  had  once  more  shot  far  ahead  of  his  rival. 
When  we  have  admitted  some  want  of  clearness 
in  the  symbolism  which  runs  through  Brand,  and 
some  shifting  of  the  point  of  view  in  the  two  last 
acts,  an  incoherency  and  a  turbidity  which  are 
natural  in  the  treatment  of  so  colossal  a  theme, 
there  is  very  little  but  praise  to  be  given  to  a 
poem  which  is  as  manifold  in  its  emotion  and  as 
melodious  in  its  versification  as  it  is  surprising  in 
its  unchallenged  originality.  In  the  literatures  of 


THE  SATIRES   (1857-67)  95 

Scandinavia  it  has  not  merely  been  unsurpassed, 
but  in  its  own  peculiar  province  it  has  not  been 
approached.  It  bears  some  remote  likeness  to 
Faust,  but  with  that  exception  there  is  perhaps 
nothing  in  the  literature  of  the  world  which  can 
be  likened  to  Brand,  except,  of  course,  Peer  Gynt. 
For  a  long  while  it  was  supposed  that  the  diffi- 
culties in  the  way  of  performing  Brand  on  the 
public  stage  were  too  great  to  be  overcome.  But 
the  task  was  attempted  at  length,  first  in  Stock- 
holm in  1895;  and  within  the  last  few  years  this 
majestic  spectacle  has  been  drawn  in  full  before 
the  eyes  of  enraptured  audiences  in  Copenhagen, 
Berlin,  Moscow  and  elsewhere.  In  spite  of  the 
timid  reluctance  of  managers,  wherever  this  play 
is  adequately  presented,  it  captures  an  emotional 
public  at  a  run.  It  is  an  appeal  against  moral 
apathy  which  arouses  the  languid.  It  is  a  clear 
and  full  embodiment  of  the  gospel  of  energy 
which  awakens  and  upbraids  the  weak.  In  the 
original,  its  rush  of  rhymes  produces  on  the  nerves 
an  almost  delirious  excitement.  If  it  is  taken  as 
an  oration,  it  is  responded  to  as  a  great  civic  ap- 
peal; if  as  a  sermon,  it  is  sternly  religious,  and 
fills  the  heart  with  tears.  In  the  solemn  mountain 
air,  with  vague  bells  ringing  high  up  among  the 
glaciers,  no  one  asks  exactly  what  Brand  ex- 
pounds, nor  whether  it  is  perfectly  coherent. 


96  IBSEN 

Witnessed  on  the  living  stage,  it  takes  the  citadel 
of  the  soul  by  storm.  When  it  is  read,  the  critical 
judgment  becomes  cooler. 

Carefully  examined,  Brand  is  found  to  present 
a  disconcerting  mixture  of  realism  and  mysticism. 
Two  men  seem  at  work  in  the  writing  of  it,  and 
their  effects  are  sometimes  contradictory.  It  has 
constantly  been  asked,  and  it  was  asked  at  once, 
"Is  Brand  the  expression  of  Ibsen's  own  nature  ?" 
Yes,  and  no.  He  threw  much  of  himself  into  his 
hero,  and  yet  he  was  careful  to  remain  outside. 
Ibsen,  as  we  have  already  pointed  out,  was  ready 
in  later  life  to  discuss  his  own  writings,  and  what 
he  said  about  them  is  often  dangerously  mystify- 
ing. He  told  Georg  Brandes  that  the  religious 
vocation  of  Brand  was  not  essential.  "I  could 
have  applied  the  whole  syllogism  just  as  well  to 
a  sculptor,  or  a  politician,  as  to  a  priest."  (He 
was  to  deal  with  each  of  these  alternations  later 
on,  but  with  what  a  difference!)  "I  could  quite 
as  well,"  he  persisted,  "have  worked  out  the  im- 
pulse which  drove  me  to  write,  by  taking  Galileo, 
for  instance,  as  my  hero — assuming,  of  course, 
that  Galileo  should  stand  firm  and  never  concede 
the  fixity  of  the  earth — or  you  yourself  in  your 
struggle  with  the  Danish  reactionaries."  This 
is  not  to  the  point,  since  in  fact  neither  Georg 
Brandes  nor  Galileo,  as  hero  of  a  mystical  drama, 


THE  SATIRES   (1857-67)  97 

could  have  produced  such  a  capacity  for  evolution 
as  is  presented  by  the  stern  priest  whose  absolute 
certitude,  although  founded,  one  admits,  on  no 
rational  theory  of  theology,  is  yet  of  the  very 
essence  of  religion. 

Brand  becomes  intelligible  when  we  regard 
him  as  a  character  of  the  twelfth  century  trans- 
ferred to  the  nineteenth.  He  has  something  of 
Peter  the  Hermit  in  him.  He  ought  to  have 
been  a  crusading  Christian  king,  fighting  against 
the  Moslem  for  the  liberties  of  some  sparkling 
city  of  God.  He  exists  in  his  personage,  under 
the  precipice,  above  the  fjord,  like  a  rude  medi- 
aeval anchorite,  who  eats  his  locusts  and  wild 
honey  in  the  desert.  We  cannot  comprehend  the 
action  of  Brand  by  any  reference  to  accepted 
creeds  and  codes,  because  he  is  so  remote  from 
the  religious  conventions  as  hardly  to  seem  ob- 
jectively pious  at  all.  He  is  violent  and  inco- 
herent; he  knows  not  clearly  what  it  is  he  wants, 
but  it  must  be  an  upheaval  of  all  that  exists,  and 
it  must  bring  Man  into  closer  contact  with  God. 
Brand  is  a  king  of  souls,  but  his  royal  dignity  is 
marred,  and  is  brought  sometimes  within  an  inch 
of  the  ridiculous,  by  the  prosaic  nature  of  his 
modern  surroundings.  He  is  harsh  and  cruel; 
he  is  liable  to  fits  of  anger  before  which  the  whole 
world  trembles;  and  it  is  by  an  avalanche,  brought 


98  IBSEN 

down  upon  him  by  his  own  wrath,  that  he  is  finally 
buried  in  the  ruins  of  the  Ice-Church. 

The  judicious  reader  may  like  to  compare  the 
character  of  Brand  with  that  extraordinary  study 
of  violence,  the  Abbe  Jules  of  Octave  Mirbeau. 
In  each  we  have  the  history  of  revolt,  in  a  suc- 
cession of  crises,  against  an  invincible  vocation. 
In  each  an  element  of  weakness  is  the  pride  of 
a  peasant  priest.  But  in  Ibsen  there  is  fully  de- 
veloped what  the  cynicism  of  Octave  Mirbeau 
avoids,  a  genuine  conception  of  such  a  rebel's 
ceaseless  effort  after  personal  holiness.  Lammers 
or  Lammenais,  what  can  it  matter  whether  some 
existing  priest  of  insurrection  did  or  did  not  set 
Ibsen  for  a  moment  on  the  track  of  his  colossal  im- 
agination ?  We  may  leave  these  discussions  to  the 
commentators;  Brand  is  one  of  the  great  poems 
of  the  world,  and  endless  generations  of  critics 
will  investigate  its  purpose  and  analyze  its  forms. 

There  is,  however,  another  than  the  priestly 
side.  The  poem  contains  a  great  deal  of  super- 
ficial and  rather  ephemeral  satire  of  contemporary 
Scandinavian  life,  echoes  of  a  frightened  Storthing 
in  Christiania,  of  a  crafty  court  in  Stockholm,  and 
of  Denmark  stretching  her  bleeding  hands  to  her 
sisters  in  an  agony  of  despair.  There  is  the  still 
slighter  local  strain  of  irony,  which  lightens  the 
middle  of  the  third  act.  Here  Ibsen  comes  not 


THE  SATIRES   (1857-67)  99 

to  heal  but  to  slay;  he  exposes  the  corpse  of  a/i 
exhausted  age,  and  will  bury  it  quickly,  with  sex- 
ton's songs  and  peals  of  elfin  laughter,  in  some 
chasm  of  rock  above  a  waterfall.  "It  is  Will 
alone  that  matters,"  and  for  the  weak  of  purpose 
there  is  nothing  but  ridicule  and  six  feet  of  such 
waste  earth  as  nature  carelessly  can  spare  from 
her  rude  store  of  graves.  Against  the  mountain 
landscape,  Brand  holds  up  his  motto  "All  or 
Nothing,"  persistently,  almost  tiresomely,  like  a 
modern  advertising  agent  affronting  the  scenery 
with  his  panacea.  More  truculently  still,  he  in- 
sists upon  the  worship  of  a  deity,  not  white- 
bearded,  but  as  young  as  Hercules,  a  scandal  to 
prudent  Lutheran  theologians,  a  prototype  of 
violent  strength. 

Yet  Brand's  own  mission  remains  undefined 
to  him — if  it  ever  takes  exact  shape — until  Agnes 
reveals  it  to  him: — 

Choose  thy  endless  loss  or  gain! 
Do  thy  work  and  bear  thy  pain.  .  .  . 
Now  (he  answers)  I  see  my  way  aright. 
In  ourselves  is  that  young  Earth, 
Ripe  for  the  divine  new-birth. 

And  it  is  in  Agnes — as  the  marvellous  fourth  act 
opens  where  her  love  for  the  little  dear  dead  child 
is  revealed,  and  where  her  patience  endures  all  the 


ioo  IBSEN 

cruelties  of  her  husband's  fanaticism — it  is  in 
Agnes  that  Ibsen's  genius  for  the  first  time  utters 
the  clear,  unembittered  note  of  full  humanity. 
He  has  ceased  now  to  be  parochial;  he  is  a  nurs- 
ling of  the  World  and  Time.  If  the  harsh  Priest 
be,  in  a  measure,  Ibsen  as  Norway  made  him, 
Agnes  and  Einar,  and  perhaps  Gerd  also,  are 
the  delicate  offspring  of  Italy. 

Considerable  postponements  delayed  the  pub- 
lication of  Brandy  which  saw  the  light  at  length, 
in  Copenhagen,  in  March,  1866.  It  was  at  once 
welcomed  by  the  Danish  press,  which  had  hitherto 
known  little  of  Ibsen,  and  the  poet's  audience 
was  thus  very  considerably  widened.  The  satire 
of  the  poem  awakened  an  eager  polemic;  the 
popular  priest  Wexels  preached  against  its  ten- 
dency. A  novel  was  published,  called  The  Daugh- 
ters of  Brandy  in  which  the  results  of  its  teaching 
were  analyzed.  Ibsen  enjoyed,  what  he  had  never 
experienced  before,  the  light  and  shade  of  a  dis- 
puted but  durable  popular  success.  Four  large 
editions  of  Brand  were  exhausted  within  the  year 
of  its  publication,  and  it  took  its  place,  of  course, 
in  more  leisurely  progress,  among  the  few  books 
which  continued,  and  still  continue,  steadily  to 
sell.  It  has  always  been,  in  the  countries  of  Scan- 
dinavia, the  best  known  and  the  most  popular  of  all 
Ibsen's  writings. 


THE  SATIRES   (1857-67)  101 

This  success,  however,  was  largely  one  of  senti- 
ment, not  of  pecuniary  fortune.  The  total  in- 
come from  four  editions  of  a  poem  like  Brandy  in 
the  conditions  of  Northern  literary  life  forty 
years  ago,  would  not  much  exceed  £100.  Hardly 
had  Ibsen  become  the  object  of  universal  dis- 
cussion than  he  found  himself  assailed,  as  never 
before,  by  the  paralysis  of  poverty.  He  could 
not  breathe,  he  could  not  move;  he  could  not 
afford  to  buy  postage  stamps  to  stick  upon  his 
business  letters.  He  was  threatened  with  the  ab- 
solute extinction  of  his  resources.  At  the  very 
time  when  Copenhagen  was  ringing  with  his 
praise  Ibsen  was  borrowing  money  for  his  modest 
food  and  rent  from  the  Danish  Consul  in  Rome. 

In  the  winter  of  1865  he  fell  into  a  highly 
nervous  condition,  in  the  midst  of  which  he  was 
assailed  by  a  malarious  fever  which  brought  him 
within  sight  of  the  grave.  To  the  agony  of  his 
devoted  wife,  he  lay  for  some  time  between  life 
and  death,  and  the  extreme  poverty  from  which 
they  suffered  made  it  difficult,  and  even  im- 
possible, for  her  to  provide  for  him  the  allevia- 
tions which  his  state  demanded.  He  gradually 
recovered,  however,  thanks  to  his  wife's  care  and 
to  his  own  magnificent  constitution,  but  the  springs 
of  courage  seemed  to  have  snapped  within  his 
breast. 


102  IBSEN 

In  March,  1866,  worn  out  with  illness,  poverty 
and  suspense,  he  wrote  a  letter  to  Bjbrnson,  "my 
one  and  only  friend,"  which  is  one  of  the  most 
heart-rending  documents  in  the  history  of  litera- 
ture. Few  great  spirits  have  been  nearer  the 
extinction  of  despair  than  Ibsen  was,  now  in  his 
thirty-ninth  year.  His  admirers,  at  their  wits' 
end  to  know  what  to  advise,  urged  him  to  write 
directly  to  Carl,  King  of  Sweden  and  Norway, 
describing  his  condition,  and  asking  for  support. 
Simultaneously  came  the  manifest  success  of 
Brandy  and,  for  the  first  time,  the  Norwegian 
press  recognized  the  poet's  merit.  There  was  a 
general  movement  in  his  favor;  King  Carl  gra- 
ciously received  his  petition  of  April  15,  and  on 
May  10  the  Storthing,  almost  unanimously,  voted 
Ibsen  a  ''poet's  pension,"  restricted  in  amount 
but  sufficient  for  his  modest  needs. 

The  first  use  he  made  of  his  freedom  was  to 
move  out  of  Rome,  where  he  found  it  impossible 
to  write,  and  to  settle  at  Frascati  among  the  hills. 
He  hired  a  nest  of  cheap  rooms  in  the  Palazzo 
Gratiosi,  two  thousand  feet  above  the  sea.  Thither 
he  came,  with  his  wife  and  his  little  son,  and 
there  he  fitted  himself  up  a  study;  setting  his 
writing-table  at  a  window  that  overlooked  an 
immensity  of  country,  and  Mont  Soracte  closing 
the  horizon  with  its  fiery  pyramid.  In  his  cor- 


THE  SATIRES   (1857-67)  103 

respondence  of  this  time  there  are  suddenly 
noticeable  a  gayety  and  an  insouciance  which  are 
elements  wholly  new  in  his  letters.  The  dreadful 
burden  was  lifted;  the  dreadful  fear  of  sinking 
in  a  sea  of  troubles  and  being  lost  for  ever,  the 
fear  which  animates  his  painful  letter  to  King 
Carl,  was  blown  away  like  a  cloud  and  the  heaven 
of  his  temper  was  serene.  At  Frascati  he  knew 
not  what  to  be  at;  he  tried  that  subject,  and  this, 
waiting  for  the  heavenly  spark  to  fall.  It  seems 
to  have  been  at  Tusculum,  and  in  the  autumn 
of  1866,  that  the  subject  he  was  looking  for  de- 
scended upon  him.  He  hurried  back  to  Rome, 
and  putting  all  other  schemes  aside,  he  devoted 
himself  heart  and  soul  to  the  composition  of  Peer 
Gynty  which  he  described  as  to  be  "a  long  dra- 
matic poem,  having  as  its  chief  figure  one  of  the 
half-mythical  and  fantastical  personages  from  the 
peasant  life  of  modern  Norway." 

He  wrote  this  work  slowly,  more  slowly  than 
was  his  wont,  and  it  was  a  whole  year  on  the 
stocks.  It  was  in  the  summer  that  Ibsen  habitu- 
ally composed  with  the  greatest  ease,  and  Peer 
Gynt  did  not  move  smoothly  until  the  poet  settled 
in  the  Villa  Pisani,  at  Casamicciola,  on  the  island 
of  Ischia.  His  own  account  was:  "After  Brand 
came  Peer  Gynt,  as  though  of  itself.  It  was 
written  in  Southern  Italy,  in  Ischia  and  at  Sor- 


io4  IBSEN 

rento.  So  far  away  from  one's  readers  one  be- 
comes reckless.  This  poem  contains  much  that 
has  its  origin  in  the  circumstances  of  my  own 
youth.  My  own  mother — with  the  necessary 
exaggeration — served  as  the  model  for  Ase." 
Peer  Gynt  was  finished  before  Ibsen  left  Sorrento 
at  the  end  of  the  autumn,  and  the  MS.  was  im- 
mediately posted  to  Copenhagen.  None  of  the 
delays  which  had  interfered  with  the  appearance 
of  Brand  now  afflicted  the  temper  of  the  poet, 
and  Peer  Gynt  was  published  in  November,  1867. 
In  spite  of  the  plain  speaking  of  Ibsen  himself, 
who  declared  that  Peer  Gynt  was  diametrically 
opposed  in  spirit  to  Brand,  and  that  it  made  no 
direct  attack  upon  social  questions,  the  critics  of 
the  later  poem  have  too  often  persisted  in  dark- 
ening it  with  their  educational  pedantries.  Ibsen 
did  well  to  be  angry  with  his  commentators. 
"They  have  discovered,"  he  said,  "much  more 
satire  in  Peer  Gynt  than  was  intended  by  me. 
Why  can  they  not  read  the  book  as  a  poem  ?  For 
as  such  I  wrote  it."  It  has  been,  however,  the 
misfortune  of  Ibsen  that  he  has  particularly  at- 
tracted the  attention  of  those  who  prefer  to  see 
anything  in  a  poem  except  its  poetry,  and  who 
treat  all  tulips  and  roses  as  if  they  were  cabbages 
for  the  pot  of  didactic  morality.  Yet  it  is  sur- 
prising that  after  all  that  the  author  said,  and 


THE  SATIRES   (1857-67)  105 

with  the  lovely  poem  shaking  the  bauble  of  its 
fool's-cap  at  them,  there  can  still  be  commen- 
tators who  see  nothing  in  Peer  Gynt  but  the 
"awful  interest  of  the  universal  problems  with 
which  it  deals."  This  obsession  of  the  critic  to 
discover  "problems"  in  the  works  of  Ibsen  has 
been  one  of  the  main  causes  of  that  impatience 
and  even  downright  injustice  with  which  his 
writings  have  been  received  by  a  large  section  of 
those  readers  who  should  naturally  have  enjoyed 
them.  He  is  a  poet,  of  fantastic  wit  and  often 
reckless  imagination,  and  he  has  been  travestied  in 
a  long  black  coat  and  white  choker,  as  though  he 
were  an  embodiment  of  the  Nonconformist  con- 
science. 

Casting  aside,  therefore,  the  spurious  "lessons" 
and  supposititious  "problems"  of  this  merry  and 
mundane  drama,  we  may  recognize  among  its 
irregularities  and  audacities  two  main  qualities  of 
merit.  Above  everything  else  which  we  see  in 
Peer  Gynt  we  see  its  fun  and  its  picturesqueness. 
Written  at  different  times  and  in  different  moods, 
there  is  an  incoherency  in  its  construction  which 
its  most  whole-hearted  admirers  cannot  explain 
away.  The  first  act  is  an  inimitable  burst  of 
lyrical  high  spirits,  tottering  on  the  verge  of  ab- 
surdity, carried  along  its  hilarious  career  with 
no  less  peril  and  with  no  less  brilliant  success  than 


io6  IBSEN 

Peer  fables  for  himself  and  the  reindeer  in  their 
ride  along  the  vertiginous  blade  of  the  Gjende. 
In  the  second  act,  satire  and  fantasy  become 
absolutely  unbridled;  the  poet's  genius  sings  and 
dances  under  him,  like  a  strong  ship  in  a  storm, 
but  the  vessel  is  rudderless  and  the  pilot  an  em- 
phatic libertine.  The  wild  impertinence  of  fancy, 
in  this  act,  from  the  moment  when  Peer  and 
the  Girl  in  the  Green  Gown  ride  off  upon  the 
porker,  down  to  the  fight  with  the  Bbig,  gigantic 
gelatinous  symbol  of  self-deception,  exceeds  in 
recklessness  anything  else  written  since  the  second 
part  of  Faust.  The  third  act,  culminating  with 
the  drive  to  Soria  Moria  Castle  and  the  death  of 
Ase,  is  of  the  very  quintessence  of  poetry,  and  puts 
Ibsen  in  the  first  rank  of  creators.  In  the  fourth 
act,  the  introduction  of  which  is  abrupt  and 
grotesque,  we  pass  to  a  totally  different  and,  I 
think,  a  lower  order  of  imagination.  The  fifth 
act,  an  amalgam  of  what  is  worst  and  best  in  the 
poem,  often  seems  divided  from  it  in  tone,  style 
and  direction,  and  is  more  like  a  symbolic  or 
mythical  gloss  upon  the  first  three  acts  than  a 
contribution  to  the  growth  of  the  general  story. 

Throughout  this  tangled  and  variegated  scene 
the  spirits  of  the  author  remain  almost  prepos- 
terously high.  If  it  were  all  hilarity  and  sar- 
donic laughter,  we  should  weary  of  the  strain. 


THE  SATIRES   (1857-67)  107 

But  physical  beauty  of  the  most  enchanting  order 
is  liberally  provided  to  temper  the  excess  of  irony. 
It  is,  I  think,  no  exaggeration  to  say  that  nowhere 
in  the  dramatic  literature  of  the  world,  not  by 
Shakespeare  himself,  is  there  introduced  into  a 
play  so  much  loveliness  of  scenery,  and  such 
varied  and  exquisite  appeal  to  the  eyes,  as  there 
is  in  Peer  Gynt.  The  fifth  act  contains  much 
which  the  reader  can  hardly  enjoy,  but  it  opens 
with  a  scene  so  full  of  the  glory  of  the  mountains 
and  the  sea  that  I  know  nothing  else  in  drama  to 
compare  with  it.  This  again  is  followed  by  one 
of  the  finest  shipwrecks  in  all  poetry.  Scene  after 
scene,  the  first  act  portrays  the  cold  and  solemn 
beauty  of  Norwegian  scenery  as  no  painter's 
brush  has  contrived  to  do  it.  For  the  woodland 
background  of  the  Saeter  Girls  there  is  no  parallel 
in  plastic  art  but  the  most  classic  of  Norwegian 
paintings,  Dahl's  "Birch  in  a  Snow  Storm." 
Pages  might  be  filled  with  praise  of  the  pictu- 
resqueness  of  tableau  after  tableau  in  each  act 
of  Peer  Gynt. 

The  hero  is  the  apotheosis  of  selfish  vanity,  and 
he  is  presented  to  us,  somewhat  indecisively,  as 
the  type  of  one  who  sets  at  defiance  his  own  life's 
design.  But  is  Peer  Gynt  designed  to  be  a  useful, 
a  good,  or  even  a  successful  man  ?  Certainly 
Ibsen  had  not  discovered  it  when  he  wrote  the 


io8  IBSEN 

first  act,  in  which  scarcely  anything  is  observable 
except  a  study,  full  of  merriment  and  sarcasm, 
of  the  sly,  lazy  and  parasitical  class  of  peasant 
rogue.  This  type  was  not  of  Ibsen's  invention; 
he  found  it  in  those  rustic  tales,  inimitably  re- 
sumed by  Asbjbrnson  and  Moe,  in  which  he  shows 
us  that  his  memory  was  steeped.  Here,  too,  he 
found  the  Bbig,  a  monster  of  Norse  superstition, 
vast  and  cold,  slippery  and  invisible,  capable  of 
infinite  contraction  and  expansion.  The  con- 
ception that  this  horror  would  stand  in  symbol 
for  a  certain  development  of  selfish  national  in- 
stability seems  to  have  seized  him  later,  and 
Peer  Gynt,  which  began  as  a  farce,  continued 
as  a  fable.  The  nearest  approach  to  a  justifica- 
tion of  the  moral  or  "problem"  purpose,  which 
Ibsen's  graver  prophets  attribute  to  him,  is  found 
in  the  sixth  scene  of  the  fifth  act,  where,  quite  in 
the  manner  of  Goethe,  thoughts  and  watch- 
words and  songs  and  tears  take  corporeal  form 
and  assail  the  aged  Peer  Gynt  with  their  re- 
proaches. 

Peer  Gynt  was  received  in  the  North  with  some 
critical  bewilderment,  and  it  has  never  been  so 
great  a  favorite  with  the  general  public  as  Brand. 
But  Ibsen,  with  triumphant  arrogance,  when  he 
was  told  that  it  did  not  conform  to  the  rules  of 
poetic  art,  asserted  that  the  rules  must  be  altered, 


THE  SATIRES  (1857-67)  109 

not  Peer  Gynt.  "My  book,"  he  wrote,  "is  poetry; 
and  if  it  is  not,  then  it  shall  be.  The  Norwegian 
conception  of  what  poetry  is  shall  be  made  to  fit 
my  book."  There  was  a  struggle  at  first  against 
this  assumption,  but  the  drama  has  become  a 
classic,  and  it  is  now  generally  allowed,  that  so 
long  as  poetry  is  a  term  wide  enough  to  include 
The  Clouds  and  the  Second  Part  of  Faust,  it  must 
be  made  wide  enough  to  take  in  a  poem  as  unique 
as  they  are  in  its  majestic  intellectual  caprices. 

Note. — By  far  the  most  exhaustive  analysis  of  Peer  Gynt  which  has 
hitherto  been  given  to  the  world  is  that  published,  as  I  send  these 
pages  to  the  press,  by  the  executors  of  Otto  Weininger,  in  his  posthu- 
mous Ueber  die  letzte  Dinge  (1907).  This  extraordinary  young  man, 
who  shot  himself  on  October  4,  1903,  in  the  house  at  Vienna  where 
Beethoven  died,  was  only  twenty-three  years  of  age  when  he  violently 
deprived  philosophical  literature  in  Europe  of  by  far  its  most  promising 
and  remarkable  recruit.  If  I  confess  myself  unable  to  see  in  Peer 
Gynt  all  that  Weininger  saw  in  it,  the  fault  is  doubtless  mine.  But 
in  Ibsen,  unquestionably,  time  will  create  profundities,  as  it  has  in 
Shakespeare.  The  greatest  works  grow  in  importance,  as  trees  do 
after  the  death  of  the  mortal  men  who  planted  them. 


CHAPTER  V 

1868-75 

IBSEN'S  four  years  in  Italy  were  years  of  rest, 
of  solitude,  of  calm.  The  attitude  of  Ibsen  to 
Italy  was  totally  distinct  from  that  of  other 
illustrious  exiles  of  his  day  and  generation.  The 
line  of  pilgrims  from  Stendhal  and  Lamartine 
down  to  Ruskin  and  the  Brownings  had  brought 
with  them  a  personal  interest  in  Italian  affairs; 
Italian  servitude  had  roused  some  of  them  to 
anger  or  irony;  they  had  spent  nights  of  insomnia 
dreaming  of  Italian  liberty.  Casa  Guidi  Win- 
dows may  be  taken  as  the  extreme  type  of  the 
way  in  which  Italy  did  not  impress  Ibsen.  He 
sought  there,  and  found,  under  the  transparent 
azure  of  the  Alban  sky,  in  the  harmonious  mur- 
murs of  the  sea,  in  the  violet  shadows  of  the  moun- 
tains, above  all  in  the  gray  streets  of  Rome,  that 
rest  of  the  brain,  that  ripening  of  the  spiritual 
faculties,  which  he  needed  most  after  his  rough 
and  prolonged  adolescence  in  Norway.  In  his 
attitude  of  passive  appreciation  he  was,  perhaps, 


1868-75  in 

more  like  Landor  than  like  any  other  of  the 
illustrious  exiles — Landor,  who  died  in  Florence 
a  few  days  after  Ibsen  settled  in  Rome.  There 
was  a  side  of  character,  too,  on  which  the  young 
Norwegian  resembled  that  fighting  man  of  genius. 
When,  therefore,  on  September  8,  1867,  Gari- 
baldi, at  Genoa,  announced  his  intention  of  march- 
ing upon  Rome,  an  echo  woke  in  many  a  poet's 
heart  "by  rose-hung  river  and  light-foot  rill," 
but  left  Ibsen  simply  disconcerted.  If  Rome 
was  to  be  freed  from  Papal  slavery,  it  would  no 
longer  be  the  somnolent  and  unupbraiding  haunt 
of  quietness  which  the  Norwegian  desired  for  the 
healing  of  his  spleen  and  his  moral  hypochondria. 
In  October  the  heralds  of  liberty  crossed  the 
Papal  frontier;  on  the  3Oth,  by  a  slightly  prosaic 
touch,  it  was  the  French  who  entered  Rome.  Of 
Ibsen,  in  these  last  months  of  his  disturbed  so- 
journ— for  he  soon  determined  that  if  there  was 
going  to  be  civil  war  in  Italy  that  country  was  no 
home  for  him — we  hear  but  little.  This  autumn, 
however,  we  find  him  increasingly  observant  of 
the  career  of  Georg  Brandes,  the  brilliant  and 
revolutionary  Danish  critic,  in  whom  he  was  later 
on  to  find  his  first  great  interpreter.  And  we  notice 
the  beginnings  of  a  difference  with  Bjornson,  lam- 
entable and  hardly  explicable,  starting,  it  would 
vaguely  seem,  out  of  a  sense  that  Bjornson  did  not 


ii2  IBSEN 

appreciate  the  poetry  of  Peer  Gynt  at  its  due  value. 
Clemens  Petersen,  who,  since  the  decease  of  Hei- 
berg,  had  been  looked  upon  as  the  doyen  of  Danish 
critics — had  pronounced  against  the  poetry  of 
Peer  Gynt,  and  Ibsen,  in  one  of  his  worst  moods, 
in  a  bearish  letter,  had  thrown  the  blame  of  this 
judgment  upon  Bjornson. 

All  through  these  last  months  in  Rome  we  find 
Ibsen  in  the  worst  of  humors.  If  it  be  admis- 
sible to  compare  him  with  an  animal,  he  seems 
the  badger  among  the  writers  of  his  time,  noc- 
turnal, inoffensive,  solitary,  but  at  the  rumor  of 
disturbance  apt  to  rush  out  of  its  burrow  and 
bite  with  terrific  ferocity.  The  bite  of  Ibsen 
was  no  joke,  and  in  moments  of  exasperation  he 
bit,  without  selection,  friend  and  foe  alike.  Among 
other  snaps  of  the  pen,  he  told  Bjornson  that  if 
he  was  not  taken  seriously  as  a  poet,  he  should  try 
his  "fate  as  a  photographer."  Bjornson,  genially 
and  wittily,  took  this  up  at  once,  and  begged  him 
to  put  his  photography  into  the  form  of  a  comedy. 
But  the  devil,  as  Ibsen  himself  said,  was  throwing 
his  shadow  between  the  friends,  and  all  the  bene- 
fits and  all  the  affection  of  the  old  dark  days  were 
rapidly  forgotten.  They  quarrelled,  too,  rather 
absurdly,  about  decorations  from  kings  and  minis- 
ters; Bjornson  having  determined  to  reject  all  such 
gewgaws,  Ibsen  announced  his  intention  of  ac- 


1868-75 

cepting  (and  wearing)  every  cross  and  star  that 
was  offered  to  him.  At  this  date,  no  doubt,  the 
temptation  was  wholly  problematical  in  both 
cases,  yet  each  poet  acted  on  his  determination 
to  the  end.  But  Bjornson's  hint  about  the  com- 
edy seems  to  have  been,  for  some  years,  the  last 
flicker  of  friendship  between  the  two.  On  this 
Ibsen  presently  acted  in  a  manner  very  offensive 
to  Bjornson. 

In  March,  1868,  Ibsen  was  beginning  to  be 
very  much  indeed  incensed  with  things  in  general. 
"What  Norway  wants  is  a  national  disaster," 
he  amiably  snarled.  It  was  high  time  that  the 
badger  should  seek  shelter  in  a  new  burrow,  and 
in  May  we  find  him  finally  quitting  Rome.  There 
was  a  farewell  banquet,  at  which  Julius  Lange, 
who  was  present,  remarks  that  Ibsen  showed  a 
spice  of  the  devil,  but  "was  very  witty  and  ami- 
able." He  went  to  Florence  for  June,  then 
quitted  Italy  altogether,  settling  for  three  months 
at  Berchtesgaden,  the  romantic  little  "sunbath" 
in  the  Salzburg  Alps,  then  still  very  quiet  and 
unfashionable.  There  he  started  his  five-act 
comedy,  The  League  of  Youth.  All  September 
he  spent  in  Munich,  and  in  October,  1868,  took 
root  once  more,  this  time  at  Dresden,  which  be- 
came his  home  for  a  considerable  number  of 
years.  Almost  at  once  he  sank  down  again  into 


ii4  IBSEN 

his  brooding  mood  of  isolation  and  quietism, 
roaming  about  the  streets  of  Dresden,  as  he  had 
haunted  those  of  Rome,  by  night  or  at  unfre- 
quented hours,  very  solitary,  seeing  few  visitors, 
writing  few  letters,  slowly  finishing  his  "photo- 
graphic" comedy,  which  he  did  not  get  off  his 
hands  until  March,  1869.  Although  he  was  still 
very  poor,  he  refused  all  solicitations  from  editors 
to  write  for  journals  or  magazines;  he  preferred 
to  appear  before  the  public  at  long  intervals,  with 
finished  works  of  importance. 

It  is  impossible  for  a  critic  who  is  not  a  Nor- 
wegian, or  not  closely  instructed  in  the  politics 
and  manners  of  the  North,  to  take  much  interest 
in  The  League  of  Youth,  which  is  the  most  pro- 
vincial of  all  Ibsen's  mature  works.  There  is  a 
cant  phrase  minted  in  the  course  of  it,  de  lokale 
forhold,  which  we  may  awkwardly  translate  as 
"the  local  conditions"  or  "situation."  The  play 
is  all  concerned  with  de  lokale  forhold,  and  there 
is  an  overwhelming  air  of  Little  Pedlington  about 
the  intrigue.  This  does  not  prevent  The  League 
of  Youth  from  being,  as  Mr.  Archer  has  said, 
"the  first  prose  comedy  of  any  importance  in 
Norwegian  literature,"1  but  it  excludes  it  from 

1  It  is  to  be  supposed  that  Mr.  Archer  deliberately  prefers  The 
League  0}  Youth  to  Bjornson's  The  Newly  Married  Couple  (1865),  a 
slighter,  but,  as  it  seems  to  me,  a  more  amusing  comedy. 


1868-75 

the  larger  European  view.  Oddly  enough,  Ibsen 
believed,  or  pretended  to  believe,  that  The  League 
of  Youth  was  a  "placable"  piece  of  foolery, 
which  could  give  no  annoyance  to  the  worst  of 
offenders  by  its  innocent  and  indulgent  banter. 
Perhaps,  like  many  strenuous  writers,  he  under- 
estimated the  violence  of  his  own  language;  per- 
haps, living  so  long  at  a  distance  from  Norway 
and  catching  but  faintly  the  reverberations  of 
its  political  turmoil,  he  did  not  realize  how  sen- 
sitive the  native  patriot  must  be  to  any  chaff  of 
"de  lokale  for  hold."  When  he  found  that  the 
Norwegians  were  seriously  angry,  Ibsen  bluntly 
told  them  that  he  had  closely  studied  the  ways 
and  the  manners  of  their  "pernicious  and  lie- 
steeped  clique."  He  was  always  something  of  a 
snake  in  the  grass  to  his  poetic  victims. 

Mr.  Archer,  whose  criticism  of  this  play  is 
extraordinarily  brilliant,  does  his  best  to  extenuate 
the  stiffness  of  it.  But  to  my  own  ear,  as  I  read 
it  again  after  a  quarter  of  a  century,  there  rise  the 
tones  of  the  stilted,  the  unsmiling,  the  essentially 
provincial  and  boringly  solemn  society  of  Chris- 
tiania  as  it  appeared  to  a  certain  young  pilgrim  in 
the  early  seventies,  condensing,  as  it  then  seemed 
to  do,  all  the  sensitiveness,  the  arrogance,  the 
crudity  which  made  communication  with  the  ex- 
cellent and  hospitable  Norwegians  of  that  past 


ii6  IBSEN 

epoch  so  difficult  for  an  outsider — so  difficult,  in 
particular,  for  one  coming  freshly  from  the  grace 
and  sweetness,  the  delicate,  cultivated  warmth 
of  Copenhagen.  The  political  conditions  which 
led  to  the  writing  of  The  League  of  Youth  are  old 
history  now.  There  was  the  "liberal"  element 
in  Norwegian  politics,  which  was  in  1868  becom- 
ing rapidly  stronger  and  more  hampering  to  the 
Government,  and  there  was  the  increasing  in- 
fluence of  Soren  Jaabaek  (1814-94),  a  peasant 
farmer  of  ultra-socialistic  views,  who  had,  almost 
alone,  opposed  in  the  Storthing  the  grant  of  any 
pensions  to  poets,  and  whose  name  was  an  abom- 
ination to  Ibsen. 

Now  Bjornson,  in  the  development  of  his 
career  as  a  political  publicist,  had  been  flirting 
more  and  more  outrageously  with  these  extreme 
ideas  and  this  truculent  peasant  party.  He  had 
even  burned  incense  before  Jaabaek,  who  was  the 
accursed  Thing.  Ibsen,  from  the  perspective  of 
Dresden,  genuinely  believed  that  Bjornson,  with 
his  ardor  and  his  energy  and  his  eloquence,  was 
becoming  a  national  danger.  We  have  seen  that 
Bjornson  had  piqued  Ibsen's  vanity  about  Peer 
Gynt,  and  nothing  exasperates  a  friendship  more 
fatally  than  public  principle  grafted  on  a  private 
slight.  Moreover,  the  whole  nature  of  Bjornson 
was  gregarious,  that  of  Ibsen  solitary;  Bjornson 


1868-75  n; 

must  always  be  leading  the  majority,  Ibsen  had 
scruples  of  conscience  if  ten  persons  agreed 
with  him.  They  were  doomed  to  disagreement. 
Meanwhile,  Ibsen  burned  his  ships  by  creating 
the  figure  of  Stensgaard,  in  The  League  of  Touth, 
a  frothy  and  mischievous  demagogue  whose 
rhetoric  irresistibly  reminded  every  one  of  Bjorn- 
son's  rolling  oratory.  What  Bjornson,  not  with- 
out dignity,  objected  to  was  not  so  much  the 
personal  attack,  as  that  the  whole  play  attempted 
"to  paint  our  young  party  of  liberty  as  a  troop 
of  pushing,  phrase-mongering  adventurers,  whose 
patriotism  lay  solely  in  their  words."  Ibsen  ac- 
knowledged that  that  was  exactly  his  opinion  of 
them,  and  what  could  follow  for  such  a  disjointed 
friendship  but  anger  and  silence  ? 

The  year  1869,  which  we  now  enter,  is  remark- 
able in  the  career  of  Ibsen  as  being  that  in  which 
he  travelled  most,  and  appeared  on  the  surface  of 
society  in  the  greatest  number  of  capacities.  He 
was  enabled  to  do  this  by  a  considerable  increase 
in  his  pension.  First  of  all,  he  was  induced  to 
pay  a  visit  of  some  months  to  Stockholm,  being 
seized  with  a  sudden  strong  desire  to  study  con- 
ditions in  Sweden,  a  country  which  he  had  hitherto 
professed  to  dislike.  He  had  a  delightful  stay 
of  two  months,  received  from  King  Carl  the  order 
of  the  Wasa,  was  feted  at  banquets,  renewed  his 


ii8  IBSEN 

acquaintance  with  Snoilsky,  and  was  treated 
everywhere  with  the  highest  distinction.  Ibsen 
and  Bjornson  were  now  beginning  to  be  recog- 
nized as  the  two  great  writers  of  Norway,  and 
their  droll  balance  as  the  Mr.  and  Mrs.  Jack 
Sprat  of  letters  was  already  becoming  defined. 
It  was  doubtless  Bjornson's  emphatic  attacks  on 
Sweden  that  at  this  moment  made  Ibsen  so  loving 
to  the  Swedes  and  so  beloved.  He  was  in  such 
clover  at  Stockholm  that  he  might  have  lingered 
on  there  indefinitely,  if  the  Khedive  had  not  in- 
vited him,  in  September,  to  be  his  guest  at  the 
opening  of  the  Suez  Canal.  This  sudden  in- 
cursion of  an  Oriental  potentate  into  the  narrative 
seems  startling  until  we  recollect  that  illustrious 
persons  were  invited  from  all  countries  to  this 
ceremony.  The  interesting  thing  is  to  see  that 
Ibsen  was  now  so  famous  as  to  be  naturally  so 
selected;  the  only  other  Norwegian  guest  being 
Professor  J.  D.  C.  Lieblein,  the  Egyptologist. 

The  poet  started  for  Egypt,  by  Dresden  and 
Paris,  on  September  28.  The  League  of  Youth 
was  published  on  the  29th,  and  first  performed 
on  October  18;  Ibsen,  therefore,  just  missed  the 
scandal  and  uproar  caused  by  the  play  in  Norway. 
In  company  with  eighty-five  other  people,  all 
illustrious  guests  of  the  Khedive,  and  under  the 
care  of  Mariette  Bey,  Ibsen  made  a  twenty-four 


1868-75 

days'  expedition  up  the  Nile  into  Nubia,  and  then 
back  to  Cairo  and  Port  Said.  There,  on  Novem- 
ber 17,  in  the  company  of  an  empress  and  several 
princes  of  the  blood,  he  saw  the  Canal  formally 
opened  and  graced  a  grand  processional  fleet  that 
sailed  out  from  Port  Said  towards  Ismaila.  But 
on  the  quay  at  Port  Said  Ibsen's  Norwegian  mail 
was  handed  to  him,  and  letters  and  newspapers 
alike  were  full  of  the  violent  scenes  in  the  course 
of  which  The  League  of  Touth  had  been  hissed 
down  at  Christiania.  Then  and  there  he  sent  his 
defiance  back  to  Norway  in  At  Port  Said,  one  of 
the  most  pointed  and  effective  of  all  his  polemical 
lyrics.  A  version  in  literal  prose  must  suffice, 
though  it  does  cruel  injustice  to  the  venomous 
melody  of  the  original : 

The  dawn  of  the  Eastern  Land 

Over  the  haven  glittered; 

Flags  from  all  corners  of  the  globe 

Quivered  from  the  masts. 

Voices  in  music 

Bore  onward  the  cantata; 

A  thousand  cannon 

Christened  the  Canal. 

The  steamers  passed  on 

By  the  obelisk. 

In  the  language  of  my  home 

Came  to  me  the  chatter  of  news. 


izo  IBSEN 

The  mirror-poem  which  I  had  polished 

For  masculine  minxes 

Had  been  smeared  at  home 

By  splutterings  from  penny  whistles. 

The  poison-fly  stung; 

It  made  my  memories  loathsome. 

Stars,  be  thanked! — 

My  home  is  what  is  ancient! 

We  hailed  the  frigate 

From  the  roof  of  the  river-boat; 

I  waved  my  hat 

And  saluted  the  flag. 

To  the  feast,  to  the  feast, 

In  spite  of  the  fangs  of  venomous  reptiles! 

A  selected  guest 

Across  the  Lakes  of  Bitterness! 

At  the  close  of  day 

Dreaming,  I  shall  slumber 

Where  Pharaoh  was  drowned — 

And  when  Moses  passed  over. 

In  this  mood  of  defiance,  with  rage  unabated, 
Ibsen  returned  home  by  Alexandria  and  Paris, 
and  was  in  Dresden  again  in  December. 

The  year  of  1870  drove  him  out  of  Dresden,  as 
the  French  occupation  had  driven  him  out  of 
Rome.  It  was  essential  for  him  to  be  at  rest  in 
the  midst  of  a  quiet  and  alien  population.  He 
was  drawn  towards  Denmark,  partly  for  the  sake 


1868-75  i2i 

of  talk  with  Brandes,  who  had  now  become  a 
factor  in  his  life,  partly  to  arrange  about  the 
performance  of  one  of  his  early  works,  and  in 
particular  of  The  Pretenders.  No  definite  plan, 
however,  had  been  formed,  when,  in  the  middle 
of  June,  war  was  declared  between  Germany  and 
France;  but  a  fortnight  later  Ibsen  quitted  Saxony, 
and  settled  for  three  months  in  Copenhagen, 
where  his  reception  was  charmingly  sympathetic. 
By  the  beginning  of  October,  after  the  fall  of 
Strasburg  and  the  hemming  in  of  Metz,  however, 
it  was  plain  on  which  side  the  fortunes  of  the  war 
would  lie,  and  Ibsen  returned  "as  from  a  rejuve- 
nating bath"  of  Danish  society  to  a  Dresden  full 
of  French  prisoners,  a  Dresden,  too,  suffering 
terribly  from  the  paralysis  of  trade,  and  showing 
a  plentiful  lack  of  enthusiasm  for  Prussia. 

Ibsen  turned  his  back  on  all  such  vexatious 
themes,  and  set  himself  to  the  collecting  and 
polishing  of  a  series  of  lyrical  poems,  the  Digte 
of  1871,  the  earliest,  and,  indeed,  the  only  such 
collection  that  he  published.  We  may  recollect 
that,  at  the  very  same  moment,  with  far  less  cause 
to  isolate  himself  from  the  horrors  of  war,  Theo- 
phile  Gautier  was  giving  the  last  touches  to 
Emaux  et  Camees.  In  December,  1870,  Ibsen 
addressed  to  Fru  Limnell,  a  lady  in  Stockholm,  his 
"Balloon-Letter,"  a  Hudibrastic  rhymed  epistle 


122  IBSEN 

in  nearly  400  lines,  containing,  with  a  good  deal 
that  is  trivial,  some  striking  symbolical  reminis- 
cences of  his  trip  through  Egypt,  and  some 
powerful  ironic  references  to  the  caravan  of 
German  invaders,  with  its  Hathor  and  its  Horus, 
which  was  then  rushing  to  the  assault  of  Paris 
under  the  doleful  colors  of  the  Prussian  flag. 
Ibsen's  sarcasms  are  all  at  the  ugliness  and  prosaic 
utilitarianism  of  the  Germans;  "Moltke,"  he  says, 
"has  killed  the  poetry  of  battles." 

Ibsen  was  now  greatly  developing  and  expand- 
ing his  views,  and  forming  a  world-policy  of  his 
own.  The  success  of  German  discipline  deeply 
impressed  him,  and  he  thought  that  the  day  had 
probably  dawned  which  would  be  fatal  to  all 
revolt  and  "liberal  rebellion"  for  the  future. 
More  than  ever  he  dreaded  the  revolutionary 
doctrines  of  men  like  Jaabaek  and  Bjornson,  which 
would  lead,  he  thought,  to  bloodshed  and  national 
disaster.  The  very  same  events  were  impressing 
Gold  win  Smith  at  the  very  same  moment  with 
his  famous  prophecy  that  the  abolition  of  all 
dynastic  and  aristocratic  institutions  was  at  hand, 
with  "the  tranquil  inauguration"  of  elective  in- 
dustrial governments  throughout  the  world.  So 
history  moves  doggedly  on,  propheten  rechts, 
propheten  links,  a  perfectly  impassive  welt-kind  in 
the  middle  of  them.  In  Copenhagen  Ibsen  had, 


i868-75  123 

after  all,  missed  Brandes,  delayed  in  Rome  by  a 
long  and  dangerous  illness;  and  all  he  could  do 
was  to  exchange  letters  with  this  still  unseen  but 
increasingly  sympathetic  and  beloved  young  friend. 
To  Brandes  Ibsen  wrote  more  freely  than  to  any 
one  else  about  the  great  events  which  were  shaking 
the  face  of  Europe  and  occupying  so  much  of 
both  their  thoughts:— 

The  old,  illusory  France  has  collapsed  [he  wrote  to  Brandes 
on  December  20,  1870,  two  days  after  the  engagement  at 
Nuits];  and  as  soon  as  the  new,  real  Prussia  does  the  same, 
we  shall  be  with  one  bound  in  a  new  age.  How  ideas  will 
then  come  tumbling  about  our  ears!  And  it  is  high  time 
they  did.  Up  till  now  we  have  been  living  on  nothing  but 
the  crumbs  from  the  revolutionary  table  of  last  century,  a 
food  out  of  which  all  nutriment  has  long  been  chewed.  The 
old  terms  require  to  have  a  new  meaning  infused  into  them. 
Liberty,  equality  and  fraternity  are  no  longer  the  things  they 
were  in  the  days  of  the  late-lamented  Guillotine.  This  is 
what  the  politicians  will  not  understand,  and  therefore  I 
hate  them.  They  want  their  own  special  revolutions — 
revolutions  in  externals,  in  politics  and  so  forth.  But  all 
this  is  mere  trifling.  What  is  all-important  is  the  revolution 
of  the  Spirit  of  Man. 

This  revolution,  as  exemplified  by  the  Com- 
mune in  Paris,  did  not  satisfy  the  anticipations 
which  Ibsen  had  formed,  and  Brandes  took  ad- 
vantage of  this  to  tell  him  that  he  had  not  yet 
studied  politics  minutely  enough  from  the  scien- 


124  IBSEN 

tific  standpoint.  Ibsen  replied  that  what  he  did 
not  possess  as  knowledge  came  to  him,  to  a  certain 
degree,  as  intuition  or  instinct.  "Let  this  be  as 
it  may,  the  poet's  essential  task  is  to  see,  not  to 
reflect.  For  me  in  particular  there  would  be 
danger  in  too  much  reflection/'  Ibsen  seems,  at 
this  time,  to  be  in  an  oscillating  frame  of  mind, 
now  bent  on  forming  some  positive  theory  of  life 
out  of  which  his  imaginative  works  shall  crystal- 
lize, harmoniously  explanatory;  at  another  time, 
anxious  to  be  unhampered  by  theories  and  prin- 
ciples, and  to  represent  individuals  and  excep- 
tions exactly  as  experience  presents  them  to  him. 
In  neither  attitude,  however,  is  there  discernible 
any  trace  of  the  moral  physician,  and  this  is  the 
central  distinction  between  Tolstoi  and  Ibsen, 
whose  methods,  at  first  sight,  sometimes  appear 
so  similar.  Tolstoi  analyzes  a  morbid  condition, 
but  always  with  the  purpose,  if  he  can,  of  curing 
it;  Ibsen  gives  it  even  closer  clinical  attention, 
but  he  leaves  to  others  the  care  of  removing  a 
disease  which  his  business  is  solely  to  diagnose. 

The  Poems,  after  infinite  revision,  were  pub- 
lished at  length,  in  a  very  large  edition,  on  May  3, 
1871.  One  reason  why  Ibsen  was  glad  to  get  this 
book  off  his  hands  was  that  it  enabled  him  to  con- 
centrate his  thoughts  on  the  great  drama  he  had 
been  projecting,  at  intervals,  for  seven  years  past, 


i868-75  I25 

the  trilogy  (as  he  then  planned  it)  on  the  story 
of  Julian  the  Apostate.  At  last  Brandts  came  to 
Dresden  (July,  1871)  and  found  the  tenebrous 
poet  plunged  in  the  study  of  Neander  and  Strauss, 
Gibbon  unfortunately  being  a  sealed  book  to 
him.  All  through  the  autumn  and  winter  he  was 
kept  in  a  chronic  state  of  irritability  by  the  in- 
trigues and  the  menaces  of  a  Norwegian  pirate, 
who  threatened  to  reprint,  for  his  own  profit, 
Ibsen's  early  and  insufficiently  protected  writings. 
This  exacerbated  the  poet's  dislike  to  his  own 
country,  where  the  very  law  courts,  he  thought, 
were  hostile  to  him.  On  this  subject  he  used 
language  of  tiresome  over-emphasis.  "From 
Sweden,  from  Denmark,  from  Germany,  I 
hear  nothing  but  what  gives  me  pleasure;  it 
is  from  Norway  that  everything  bad  comes 
upon  me."  It  was  indicated  to  would-be  Nor- 
wegian visitors  that  they  were  not  welcome  at 
Dresden.  Norwegian  friends,  he  said,  were  "a 
costly  luxury"  which  he  was  obliged  to  deny 
himself. 

The  First  Part  of  Julian  was  finished  on  Christ- 
mas Day,  but  it  took  over  a  year  more  before 
the  entire  work,  as  we  now  possess  it,  was  com- 
pleted. "A  Herculean  labor,"  the  author  called 
it,  when  he  finally  laid  down  a  weary  pen  in 
February,  1873.  The  year  1872  had  been  very 


i26  IBSEN 

quietly  spent  in  unremitting  literary  labor,  tem- 
pered by  genial  visits  from  some  illustrious  Danes 
of  the  older  generation,  as  particularly  Hans 
Christian  Andersen  and  Meyer  Aron  Gold- 
schmidt,  and  by  more  formal  intercourse  with  a 
few  Germans  such  as  Konrad  Maurer  and  Paul 
Heyse;  all  this  time,  let  us  remember,  no  Nor- 
wegians— "by  request."  The  summer  was  spent 
in  long  rambles  over  the  mountains  of  Austria, 
ending  up  with  a  month  of  deep  repose  in  Berch- 
tesgaden.  The  next  year  was  like  unto  this, 
except  that  its  roaming,  restless  summer  closed 
with  several  months  in  Vienna;  and  on  Octo- 
ber 17,  1873,  nonum  in  annum,  after  the  Hora- 
tian  counsel,  the  prodigious  masterpiece,  Emperor 
and  Galilean,  was  published  in  Copenhagen  at 
last. 

Of  all  the  writings  of  Ibsen,  his  huge  double 
drama  on  the  rise  and  fall  of  Julian  is  the  most 
extensive  and  the  most  ambitious.  It  is  not 
difficult  to  understand  what  it  was  about  the 
most  subtle  and  the  most  speculative  of  the 
figures  which  animate  the  decline  of  antiquity 
that  fascinated  the  imagination  of  Ibsen.  Suc- 
cessive historians  have  celebrated  the  flexibility 
of  intelligence  and  firmness  of  purpose  which  were 
combined  in  the  brain  of  Julian  with  a  passion  for 
abstract  beauty  and  an  enthusiasm  for  a  restored 


i 868-75  I27 

system  of  pagan  Hellenic  worship.  There  was  an 
individuality  about  Julian,  an  absence  of  the 
common  purple  convention,  of  the  imperial 
rhetoric,  which  strongly  commended  him  to 
Ibsen,  and  in  his  perverse  ascetic  revolt  against 
Christianity  he  offered  a  fascinating  originality  to 
one  who  thought  the  modern  world  all  out  of 
joint.  As  a  revolutionary,  Julian  presented  ideas 
of  character  which  could  not  but  passionately 
attract  the  Norwegian  poet.  His  attitude  to  his 
emperor  and  to  his  God,  sceptical,  in  each  case, 
in  each  case  inspired  by  no  vulgar  motive  but  by 
a  species  of  lofty  and  melancholy  fatalism,  prom- 
ised a  theme  of  the  most  entrancing  complexity. 
But  there  are  curious  traces  in  Ibsen's  corre- 
spondence of  the  difficulty,  very  strange  in  his 
case,  which  he  experienced  in  forming  a  con- 
crete idea  of  Julian  in  his  own  mind.  He  had 
been  vaguely  drawn  to  the  theme,  and  when  it 
was  too  late  to  recede,  he  found  himself  baffled 
by  the  paradoxes  which  he  encountered,  and  by 
the  contradictions  of  a  figure  seen  darkly  through 
a  mist  of  historical  detraction. 

He  met  these  difficulties  as  well  as  he  could,  and 
as  a  prudent  dramatic  poet  should,  by  close  and 
observant  study  of  the  document.  He  endeav- 
ored to  reconcile  the  evident  superiority  of  Julian 
with  the  absurd  eccentricities  of  his  private  man- 


i28  IBSEN 

ners  and  with  the  futility  of  his  public  acts.  He 
noted  all  the  Apostate's  foibles  by  the  side  of  his 
virtues  and  his  magnanimities.  He  traced  with- 
out hesitation  the  course  of  that  strange  insur- 
rection which  hurled  a  coarse  fanatic  from  the 
throne,  only  to  place  in  his  room  a  literary  pedant 
with  inked  fingers  and  populous  beard.  He 
accepted  everything,  from  the  parasites  to  the 
purple  slippers.  The  dangers  of  so  humble  an 
attendance  upon  history  were  escaped  with  suc- 
cess in  the  first  instalment  of  his  "world  drama." 
In  the  strong  and  mounting  scenes  of  Cczsar's 
Apostacy,  the  rapidity  with  which  the  incidents 
succeed  one  another,  their  inherent  significance, 
the  innocent  splendor  of  Julian's  mind  in  its  first 
emancipation  from  the  chains  of  false  faith,  com- 
bine to  produce  an  effect  of  high  dramatic  beauty. 
Georg  Brandes,  whose  instinct  in  such  matters 
was  almost  infallible,  when  he  read  the  First 
Part  shortly  after  its  composition,  entreated  Ibsen 
to  give  this,  as  it  stood,  to  the  public,  and  to  let 
The  Emperor  'Julian  s  End  follow  independently. 
Had  Ibsen  consented  to  do  this,  Cesar's  Fall 
would  certainly  take  a  higher  place  among  his 
works  than  it  does  at  present,  when  its  effect  is 
somewhat  amputated  and  its  meaning  threatened 
with  incoherence  by  the  author's  apparent  volte- 
face  in  the  Second  Part. 


i 868-75  I29 

It  was  a  lifelong  disappointment  to  Ibsen  that 
Emperov  and  Galilean,  on  which  he  expended  far 
more  consideration  and  labor  than  on  any  other 
of  his  works,  was  never  a  favorite  either  with  the 
public  or  among  the  critics.  With  the  best  will 
in  the  world,  however,  it  is  not  easy  to  find  full 
enjoyment  in  this  gigantic  work,  which  by  some 
caprice  of  style  defiant  of  analysis,  lacks  the 
vitality  which  is  usually  characteristic  of  Ibsen's 
least  production.  The  speeches  put  into  the 
mouths  of  antique  characters  are  appropriate, 
but  they  are  seldom  vivid;  as  Bentley  said  of  the 
epistles  of  Julian's  own  teacher  Libanius,  "You 
feel  by  the  emptiness  and  deadness  of  them,  that 
you  converse  with  some  dreaming  pedant,  his 
elbow  on  his  desk."  The  scheme  of  Ibsen's 
drama  was  too  vast  for  the  very  minute  and  metic- 
ulous method  he  chose  to  adopt.  What  he 
gives  us  is  an  immense  canvas,  on  which  he  has 
painted  here  and  there  in  miniature.  It  is  a  pity 
that  he  chose  for  dramatic  representation  so 
enormous  a  field.  It  would  have  suited  his  genius 
far  better  to  have  abandoned  any  attempt  to 
write  a  conclusive  history,  and  have  selected  some 
critical  moment  in  the  life  of  Julian.  He  should 
rather  have  concentrated  his  energies,  inde- 
pendent of  the  chroniclers,  on  the  resuscitation 
of  that  episode,  and  in  the  course  of  it  have 


130 


IBSEN 


trembled  less  humbly  under  the  uplifted  finger 
of  Ammianus. 

Of  Emperor  and  Galilean  Ibsen  afterwards  said : 
"It  was  the  first"  (but  he  might  have  added 
"the  only")  "poem  which  I  have  written  under 
the  influence  of  German  ideas."  He  was  aware 
of  the  danger  of  living  too  long  away  from  his 
own  order  of  thought  and  language.  But  it  was 
always  difficult  for  him,  once  planted  in  a  place, 
to  pull  up  his  roots.  A  weariness  took  possession 
of  him  after  the  publication  of  his  double  drama, 
and  he  did  practically  nothing  for  four  years. 
This  marks  a  central  joint  in  the  structure  of  his 
career,  what  the  architects  call  a  "channel"  in 
it,  adding  to  the  general  retrospect  of  Ibsen's 
work  an  aspect  of  solidity  and  resource.  During 
these  years  he  revised  some  of  his  early  writings, 
made  a  closer  study  of  the  arts  of  sculpture  and 
painting,  and  essayed,  without  satisfaction,  a 
very  brief  sojourn  in  Norway.  In  the  spring  of 
1875  he  definitely  moved  with  his  family  from 
Dresden  to  Munich. 

The  brief  visit  to  Christiania  in  1874  proved 
very  unfortunate.  Ibsen  was  suspicious,  the  Nor- 
wegians of  that  generation  were  constitutionally 
stiff  and  reserved;  long  years  among  Southern 
races  had  accustomed  him  to  a  plenitude  in 
gesture  and  emphasis.  He  suffered,  all  the  brief 


1868-75  i3* 

time  he  was  in  Norway,  from  an  intolerable 
malaise.  Ten  years  afterwards,  in  writing  to 
Bjornson,  the  discomfort  of  that  experience  was 
still  unallayed.  "I  have  not  yet  saved  nearly 
enough,"  he  said,  "to  support  myself  and  my 
family  in  the  case  of  my  discontinuing  my  literary 
work.  And  I  should  be  obliged  to  discontinue 
it  if  I  lived  in  Christiania.  .  .  .  This  simply 
means  that  I  should  not  write  at  all.  When,  ten 
years  ago,  after  an  absence  of  ten  years,  I  sailed 
up  the  fjord,  I  felt  a  weight  settling  down  on  my 
breast,  a  feeling  of  actual  physical  oppression. 
And  this  feeling  lasted  all  the  time  I  was  at  home; 
I  was  not  myself  under  the  stare  of  all  those  cold, 
uncomprehending  Norwegian  eyes  at  the  windows 
and  in  the  streets." 

Ibsen  had  now  been  more  than  ten  years  an 
exile  from  Norway,  and  his  sentiments  with  re- 
gard to  his  own  people  were  still  what  they  were 
when,  in  July,  1872,  he  had  sent  home  his  Ode 
for  the  Millenary  Festival.  That  very  striking 
poem,  one  of  the  most  solid  of  Ibsen's  lyrical  per- 
formances, had  opened  in  the  key  of  unmitigated 
defiance  to  popular  opinion  at  home.  It  was  in- 
tended to  show  Norwegians  that  they  must  alter 
their  attitude  towards  him,  as  he  would  never 
change  his  behavior  towards  them.  "  My  country- 
men," he  said: — 


132  IBSEN 

My  countrymen,  who  filled  for  me  deep  bowls 
Of  wholesome  bitter  medicine,  such  as  gave 
The  poet,  on  the  margin  of  his  grave, 
Fresh  force  to  fight  where  broken  twilight  rolls, — 

My  countrymen,  who  sped  me  o'er  the  wave, 
An  exile,  with  my  griefs  for  pilgrim-soles, 
My  fears  for  burdens,  doubts  for  staff,  to  roam, — 
From  the  wide  world  I  send  you  greeting  1iome. 

I  send  you  thanks  for  gifts  that  help  and  harden, 
Thanks  for  each  hour  of  purifying  pain; 

Each  plant  that  springs  in  my  poetic  garden 
Is  rooted  where  your  harshness  poured  its  rain; 

Each  shoot  in  which  it  blooms  and  burgeons  forth 

It  owes  to  that  gray  weather  from  the  North; 

The  sun  relaxes,  but  the  fog  secures! 

My  country,  thanks!    My  life's  best  gifts  were  yours. 

In  spite  of  these  sardonic  acknowledgments, 
Ibsen's  fame  in  Norway,  though  still  disputed, 
was  now  secure.  In  Denmark  and  Sweden  it  was 
almost  unchallenged,  and  he  was  a  name,  at  least, 
in  Germany.  In  England,  since  1872,  he  had  not 
been  without  a  prophet.  But.  in  Italy,  Russia, 
France — three  countries  upon  the  intelligence  of 
which  he  was  presently  to  make  a  wide  and  dur- 
able impression — he  was  still  quite  unknown. 

Meanwhile,  in  glancing  over  the  general  litera- 
ture of  Europe,  we  see  his  figure,  at  the  threshold 
of  his  fiftieth  year,  taking  greater  and  greater 
prominence.  He  had  become,  in  the  sudden 


1868-75  133 

extinction  of  the  illustrious  old  men  of  Denmark, 
the  first  living  writer  of  the  North.  He  was  to 
Norway  what  Valera  was  to  Spain,  Carducci  to 
Italy,  Swinburne  or  Rossetti  to  England,  and 
Leconte  de  Lisle  to  France.  These  were  mainly 
lyrical  poets,  but  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that 
Ibsen,  down  at  least  till  1871,  was  prominently 
illustrious  as  a  writer  in  metrical  form.  If,  in 
the  second  portion  of  his  career,  he  resolutely 
deprived  himself  of  all  indulgence  in  the  orna- 
ment of  verse,  it  was  a  voluntary  act  of  austerity. 
It  was  Charles  V  at  Yuste,  wilfully  exchanging 
the  crown  of  jewels  for  the  coarse  brown  cowl  of 
St.  Jerome.  And  now,  after  a  year  or  two  of 
prayer  and  fasting,  Ibsen  began  a  new  intellectual 
career. 


CHAPTER  VI 

1875-82 

WHILE  Ibsen  was  sitting  at  Munich,  in  this 
climacteric  stage  of  his  career,  dreaming  of 
wonderful  things  and  doing  nothing,  there  came 
to  him,  in  the  early  months  of  1875,  two  new  plays 
by  his  chief  rival.  These  were  The  Editor  and 
A  Bankruptcy,  in  which  Bjornson  suddenly 
swooped  from  his  sagas  and  his  romances  down 
into  the  middle  of  sordid  modern  life.  This  was 
his  first  attempt  at  that  "photography  by  comedy" 
which  he  had  urged  on  Ibsen  in  1868.  It  is  not, 
I  think,  recorded  what  was  Ibsen's  comment  on 
these  two  plays,  and  particularly  on  A  Bankruptcy, 
but  it  is  written  broadly  over  the  surface  of  his  own 
next  work.  It  is  obvious  that  he  perceived  that 
Bjornson  had  carried  a  very  spirited  raid  into  his 
own  particular  province,  and  he  was  determined 
to  drive  this  audacious  enemy  back  by  means  of 
greater  audacities. 

Not  at  once,  however;  for  an  extraordinary 
languor  seemed  to  have  fallen  upon  Ibsen.  His 

134 


1875-82  135 

isolation  from  society  became  extreme;  for  nearly 
a  year  he  gave  no  sign  of  life.  In  September, 
1875,  indeed,  if  not  earlier,  he  was  at  work  on  a 
five-act  play,  but  what  this  was  is  unknown.  It 
seems  to  have  been  in  the  winter  of  1876,  after 
an  unprecedented  period  of  inanimation,  that  he 
started  a  new  comedy,  The  Pillars  of  Society, 
which  was  finished  in  Munich  in  July,  1877,  that 
summer  being  unique  in  the  fact  that  the  Ibsens 
do  not  seem  to  have  left  town  at  all. 

Ibsen  was  now  a  good  deal  altered  in  the  ex- 
teriors of  character.  With  his  fiftieth  year  he 
presents  himself  as  no  more  the  Poet,  but  the 
Man  of  Business.  Molbech  told  me  that  at  this 
time  the  velveteen  jacket,  symbol  of  the  dear 
delays  of  art,  was  discarded  in  favor  of  a  frock- 
coat,  too  tight  across  the  chest.  Ibsen  was  now 
beginning,  rather  shyly,  very  craftily,  to  invest 
money;  he  even  found  himself  in  frequent  straits 
for  ready  coin  from  his  acute  impatience  to  set 
every  rix-dollar  breeding.  He  cast  the  suspicion 
of  poetry  from  him,  and  with  his  gold  spectacles, 
his  Dundreary  whiskers,  his  broadcloth  bosom 
and  his  quick  staccato  step,  he  adopted  the  pose 
of  a  gentleman  of  affairs,  very  positive  and  with 
no  nonsense  about  him. 

He  had  long  determined  on  the  wilful  aban- 
donment of  poetic  form,  and  the  famous  state- 


136  IBSEN 

ment  made  in  a  letter  to  myself  (January  15,  1874) 
must  be  quoted,  although  it  is  well  known,  since 
it  contains  the  clearest  of  all  the  explanations  by 
which  Ibsen  justified  his  new  departure:— 

You  are  of  opinion  that  the  drama  [Emperor  and  Galilaari] 
ought  to  have  been  written  in  verse,  and  that  it  would  have 
gained  by  this.  Here  I  must  differ  from  you.  The  play  is, 
as  you  will  have  observed,  conceived  in  the  most  realistic 
style:  the  illusion  I  wished  to  produce  is  that  of  reality.  I 
wished  to  produce  the  impression  on  the  reader  that  what  he 
was  reading  was  something  that  had  really  happened.  If 
I  had  employed  verse,  I  should  have  counteracted  my  own 
intention  and  prevented  the  accomplishment  of  the  task  I 
had  set  myself.  The  many  ordinary  insignificant  characters 
whom  I  have  intentionally  introduced  into  the  play  would 
have  become  indistinct,  and  indistinguishable  from  one 
another,  if  I  had  allowed  all  of  them  to  speak  in  one  and 
the  same  rhythmical  measure.  We  are  no  longer  living  in 
the  days  of  Shakespeare.  Among  sculptors  there  is  already 
talk  of  painting  statues  in  the  natural  colors.  Much  can 
be  said  both  for  and  against  this.  I  have  no  desire  to  see  the 
Venus  of  Milo  painted,  but  I  would  rather  see  the  head  of  a 
negro  executed  in  black  than  in  white  marble.  Speaking 
generally,  the  style  must  conform  to  the  degree  of  ideality 
which  pervades  the  representation.  My  new  drama  is  no 
tragedy  in  the  ancient  acceptation;  what  I  desired  to  depict 
were  human  beings,  and  therefore  I  would  not  let  them  talk 
"the  language  of  the  Gods." 

This  revolt  against  dramatic  verse  was  a  feature 
of  the  epoch.  In  1877  Alphonse  Daudet  was  to 


1875-82  137 

write  of  a  comedy,  "Mais,  helas!  cette  piece  est 
en  vers,  et  1'ennui  s'y  promene  librement  entre 
les  rimes." 

No  poet,  however,  sacrificed  so  much,  or  held 
so  rigidly  to  his  intention  of  reproducing  the 
exact  language  of  real  life,  as  did  Ibsen  in  the 
series  of  plays  which  opens  with  The  Pillars  of 
Society.  This  drama  was  published  in  Copen- 
hagen in  October,  1877,  and  was  acted  almost 
immediately  in  Denmark,  Sweden  and  Norway; 
it  had  the  good  fortune  to  be  taken  up  warmly 
in  Germany.  What  Ibsen's  idea  was,  in  the  new 
sort  of  realistic  drama  which  he  was  inventing, 
was,  in  fact,  perceived  at  once  by  German  audi- 
ences, although  it  was  not  always  approved  of. 
He  was  the  guest  of  the  theatromaniac  Duke  of 
Saxe-Meiningen,  and  The  Pillars  of  Society  was 
played  in  many  parts  of  Germany.  In  Scandi- 
navia the  book  of  the  play  sold  well,  and  the  piece 
had  some  success  on  the  boards,  but  it  did  not 
create  anything  like  so  much  excitement  as  the 
author  had  hoped  that  it  would.  Danish  taste 
pronounced  it  ""too  German." 

For  the  fact  that  The  Pillars  of  Society,  except 
in  Scandinavia  and  Germany,  did  not  then,  and 
never  has  since,  taken  a  permanent  hold  upon  the 
theatre,  Mr.  William  Archer  gives  a  reason  which 
cannot  be  controverted,  namely,  that  by  the  time 


138  IBSEN 

the  other  foreign  publics  had  fully  awakened  to 
the  existence  of  Ibsen, 

he  himself  had  so  far  outgrown  the  phase  of  his  development 
marked  by  Pillars  of  Society,  that  the  play  already  seemed 
commonplace  and  old-fashioned.  It  exactly  suited  the  Ger- 
man public  of  the  eighties;  it  was  exactly  on  a  level  with 
their  theatrical  intelligence.  But  it  was  above  the  theatrical 
intelligence  of  the  Anglo-American  public,  and  .  .  .  below 
that  of  the  French  public.  This  is  of  course  an  exaggeration. 
What  I  mean  is  that  there  was  no  possible  reason  why  the 
countrymen  of  Augier  and  Dumas  should  take  any  special 
interest  in  Pillars  of  Society.  It  was  not  obviously  in  advance 
of  these  masters  in  technical  skill,  and  the  vein  of  Teutonic 
sentiment  running  through  it  could  not  greatly  appeal  to  the 
Parisian  public  of  that  period. 

The  subject  of  The  Pillars  of  Society  was  the 
hollowness  and  rottenness  of  those  supports,  and 
the  severe  and  unornamented  prose  which  Ibsen 
now  adopted  was  very  favorable  to  its  discus- 
sion. He  was  accused,  however,  of  having  lived 
so  long  away  from  home  as  to  have  fallen  out  of 
touch  with  real  Norwegian  life,  which  he  studied 
in  the  convex  mirror  of  the  newspapers.  It  is 
more  serious  objection  to  The  Pillars  of  Society 
that  in  it,  as  little  as  in  The  League  of  Touth,  had 
Ibsen  cut  himself  off  from  the  traditions  of  the 
well-made  play.  Gloomy  and  homely  as  are  the 
earlier  acts,  Ibsen  sees  as  yet  no  way  out  of  the 


1875-82  139 

imbroglio  but  that  known  to  Scribe  and  the 
masters  of  the  "well-made"  play.  The  social 
hypocrisy  of  Consul  Bernick  is  condoned  by  a  sort 
of  death-bed  repentance  at  the  close,  which  is  very 
much  of  the  usual  "  bless-ye-my-children "  order. 
The  loss  of  the  Indian  Girl  is  miraculously  pre- 
vented, and  at  the  end  the  characters  are  solemn- 
ized and  warned,  yet  are  left  essentially  none  the 
worse  for  their  alarm.  This,  unfortunately,  is 
not  the  mode  in  which  the  sins  of  scheming  people 
find  them  out  in  real  life.  But  to  the  historical 
critic  it  is  very  interesting  to  see  Bjornson  and 
Ibsen  nearer  one  another  in  A  Bankruptcy  and 
The  Pillars  of  Society  than  they  had  ever  been 
before.  They  now  started  on  a  course  of  eager, 
though  benevolent,  rivalry  which  was  eminently 
to  the  advantage  of  each  of  them. 

No  feature  of  Ibsen's  personal  career  is  more 
interesting  than  his  relation  to  Bjornson.  Great 
as  the  genius  of  Ibsen  was,  yet,  rating  it  as  un- 
grudgingly as  possible,  we  have  to  admit  that 
Bjornson's  character  was  the  more  magnetic  and 
more  radiant  of  the  two.  Ibsen  was  a  citizen  of 
the  world;  he  belonged,  in  a  very  remarkable 
degree,  to  the  small  class  of  men  whose  intelli- 
gence lifts  them  above  the  narrowness  of  local 
conditions,  who  belong  to  civilization  at  large, 
not  to  the  system  of  one  particular  nation.  He 


i4o  IBSEN 

was,  in  consequence,  endowed,  almost  automati- 
cally, with  the  instinct  of  regarding  ideas  from  a 
central  point;  if  he  was  to  be  limited  at  all,  he 
might  be  styled  European,  although,  perhaps,  few 
Western  citizens  would  have  had  less  difficulty 
than  he  in  making  themselves  comprehended  by 
a  Chinese,  Japanese  or  Indian  mind  of  unusual 
breadth  and  cultivation.  On  the  other  hand,  in 
accepting  the  advantages  of  this  large  mental 
outlook,  he  was  forced  to  abandon  those  of 
nationality.  No  one  can  say  that  Ibsen  was, 
until  near  the  end  of  his  life,  a  good  Norwegian, 
and  he  failed,  by  his  utterances,  to  vibrate  the  local 
mind.  But  Bjornson,  with  less  originality,  was 
the  typical  patriot  in  literature,  and  what  he  said, 
and  thought,  and  wrote  was  calculated  to  stir  the 
local  conscience  to  the  depths  of  its  being. 

When,  therefore,  in  1867,  Ibsen,  who  was  bound 
by  all  natural  obligations  and  tendencies  to  remain 
on  the  best  terms  with  Bjornson,  allowed  the  old 
friendship  between  them  to  lapse  into  positive 
antagonism,  he  was  following  the  irresistible  evo- 
lution of  his  fate,  as  Bjornson  was  following  his. 
It  was  as  inevitable  that  Ibsen  should  grow  to  his 
full  height  in  solitude  as  it  was  that  Bjornson  should 
pine  unless  he  was  fed  by  the  dew  and  sunlight  of 
popular  meetings,  torchlight  processions  of  stu- 
dents and  passionate  appeals  to  local  sentiment. 


1875-82  141 

Trivial  causes,  such  as  those  which  we  have 
chronicled  earlier,  might  seem  to  lead  up  to  a  di- 
vision, but  that  division  was  really  inherent  in  the 
growth  of  the  two  men. 

Ibsen,  however,  was  not  wholly  a  gainer  at 
first  even  in  genius,  by  the  separation.  It  cut  him 
off  from  Norway  too  entirely,  and  it  threw  him 
into  the  arms  of  Germany.  There  were  thirteen 
years  in  which  Ibsen  and  Bjornson  were  nothing 
to  one  another,  and  these  were  not  years  of  un- 
mingled  mental  happiness  for  either  of  them. 
But  during  this  long  period  each  of  these  very 
remarkable  men  "came  into  his  kingdom,"  and 
when  there  was  no  longer  any  chance  that  either 
of  them  could  warp  the  nature  of  the  other,  fate 
brought  them  once  more  together. 

The  reconciliation  began,  of  course,  with  a 
gracious  movement  from  Bjornson.  At  the  end 
of  1880,  writing  for  American  readers,  Bjornson 
had  the  generous  candor  to  say:  "I  think  I  have 
a  pretty  thorough  acquaintance  with  the  dramatic 
literature  of  the  world,  and  I  have  not  the  slightest 
hesitation  in  saying  that  Henrik  Ibsen  possesses 
more  dramatic  power  than  any  other  play-writer 
of  our  day."  When  we  remember  that,  in  France 
alone,  Augier  and  Dumas  fils  and  Hugo,  Halevy 
and  Meilhac  and  Labiche,  were  all  of  them  alive, 
the  compliment,  though  a  sound,  was  a  vivid  one. 


i42  IBSEN 

Sooner  or  later,  everything  that  was  said  about 
Ibsen,  though  it  were  whispered  in  Choctaw  be- 
hind the  altar  of  a  Burmese  temple,  came  round 
to  Ibsen's  ears,  and  this  handsome  tribute  from 
the  rival  produced  its  effect.  And  when,  shortly 
afterwards,  still  in  America,  Bjornson  was  nearly 
killed  in  a  railway  accident,  Ibsen  broke  the  long 
silence  by  writing  to  him  a  most  cordial  letter  of 
congratulation. 

The  next  incident  was  the  publication  of  Ghosts, 
when  Bjornson,  now  thoroughly  roused,  stood 
out  almost  alone,  throwing  the  vast  prestige  of 
his  judgment  into  the  empty  scale  against  the  other- 
wise unanimous  black-balling.  Then  the  recon- 
cilement was  full  and  fraternal,  and  Ibsen  wrote 
from  Rome  (January  24,  1882),  with  an  emotion 
rare  indeed  for  him:  "The  only  man  in  Norway 
who  has  frankly,  boldly  and  generously  taken  my 
part  is  Bjornson.  It  is  just  like  him;  he  has,  in 
truth,  a  great,  a  kingly  soul;  and  I  shall  never  for- 
get what  he  has  done  now."  Six  months  later,  on 
occasion  of  Bjornson's  jubilee,  Ibsen  telegraphed: 
"My  thanks  for  the  work  done  side  by  side  with 
me  in  the  service  of  freedom  these  twenty-five 
years."  These  words  wiped  away  all  unhappy 
memories  of  the  past;  they  gave  public  recognition 
to  the  fact  that,  though  the  two  great  poets  had  been 
divided  for  half  a  generation  by  the  forces  of 


1875-82  143 

circumstance,  they  had  both  been  fighting  at 
wings  of  the  same  army  against  the  common 
enemy. 

This,  however,  takes  us  For  the  moment  a  little 
too  far  ahead.  After  the  publication  of  The 
Pillars  of  Society,  Ibsen  remained  quiet  for  some 
time;  indeed,  from  this  date  we  find  him  adopt- 
ing the  practice  which  was  to  be  regular  with  him 
henceforth,  namely,  that  of  letting  his  mind  lie 
fallow  for  one  year  after  the  issue  of  each  of  his 
works,  and  then  spending  another  year  in  the 
formation  of  the  new  play.  Munich  gradually 
became  tedious  to  him,  and  he  justly  observed 
that  the  pressure  of  German  surroundings  was 
unfavorable  to  the  healthy  evolution  of  his  genius. 
In  1878  he  went  back  to  Rome,  which,  although 
it  was  no  longer  the  quiet  and  aristocratic  Rome 
of  Papal  days,  was  still  immensely  attractive  to 
his  temperament.  He  was  now,  in  some  measure, 
"a  person  of  means,"  and  he  made  the  habit  of 
connoisseurship  his  hobby.  He  formed  a  small 
collection  of  pictures,  selecting  works  with,  as  he 
believed,  great  care.  The  result  could  be  seen 
long  afterwards  by  those  who  visited  him  in  his 
final  affluence,  for  they  hung  round  the  rooms  of 
the  sumptuous  flat  in  which  he  spent  his  old  age 
and  in  which  he  died.  His  taste,  as  far  as  one  re- 
members, was  for  the  Italian  masters  of  the  decline, 


144  IBSEN 

and  whether  he  selected  pictures  with  a  good  judg- 
ment must  be  left  for  others  to  decide.  Probably 
he  shared  with  Shelley  a  fondness  for  the  Guercinos 
and  the  Guido  Renis,  whom  we  can  now  admire 
only  in  defiance  of  Ruskin. 

In  April,  1879,  it  is  understood,  a  story  was 
told  him  of  an  incident  in  the  Danish  courts,  the 
adventure  of  a  young  married  woman  in  one  of 
the  small  towns  of  Zealand,  which  set  his  thoughts 
running  on  a  new  dramatic  enterprise.  He  was 
still  curiously  irritated  by  contemplating,  in  his 
mind's  eye,  the  "respectable,  estimable  narrow- 
mindedness  and  worldliness"  of  social  conditions 
in  Norway,  where  there  was  no  aristocracy,  and 
where  a  lower  middle-class  took  the  place  of  a 
nobility,  with,  as  he  thought,  sordid  results.  -But 
he  was  no  longer  suffering  from  what  he  him- 
self had  called  "the  feeling  of  an  insane  man 
staring  at  one  single,  hopelessly  black  spot."  He 
went  to  Amalfi  for  the  summer,  and  in  that  de- 
lightful spot,  so  curiously  out  of  keeping  with  his 
present  rigidly  prosaic  mood,  he  set  himself  to 
write  what  is  probably  the  most  widely  famous  of 
all  his  works,  A  Doll's  House.  The  day  before  he 
started  he  wrote  to  me  from  Rome  (in  an  unpub- 
lished letter  of  July  4,  1879):  "I  have  been  living 
here  with  my  family  since  September  last,  and 
most  of  that  time  I  have  been  occupied  with  the 


1875-82  145 

idea  of  a  new  dramatic  work,  which  I  shall 
now  soon  finish,  and  which  will  be  published 
in  October.  It  is  a  serious  drama,  really  a 
family  drama,  dealing  with  modern  conditions 
and  in  particular  with  the  problems  which 
complicate  marriage."  This  play  he  finished, 
lingering  at  Amalfi,  in  September,  1879.  It  was 
an  engineer's  experiment  at  turning  up  and  drain- 
ing a  corner  of  the  moral  swamp  which  Nor- 
wegian society  seemed  to  be  to  his  violent  and 
ironic  spirit. 

A  Doll's  House  was  Ibsen's  first  unqualified 
success.  Not  merely  was  it  the  earliest  of  his 
plays  which  excited  universal  discussion,  but  in 
its  construction  and  execution  it  carried  out 
much  further  than  its  immediate  precursors 
Ibsen's  new  ideal  as  an  unwavering  realist.  Mr. 
Arthur  Symons  has  well  said  l  that  "A  Doll's 
House  is  the  first  of  Ibsen's  plays  in  which  the 
puppets  have  no  visible  wires."  It  may  even  be 
said  that  it  was  the  first  modern  drama  in  which 
no  wires  had  been  employed.  Not  that  even  here 
the  execution  is  perfect,  as  Ibsen  afterwards  made 
it.  The  arm  of  coincidence  is  terribly  shortened, 
and  the  early  acts,  clever  and  entertaining  as  they 
are,  are  still  far  from  the  inevitability  of  real  life. 
But  when,  in  the  wonderful  last  act,  Nora  issues 

1  The  Quarterly  Review  for  October,  1906. 


146  IBSEN 

from  her  bedroom,  dressed  to  go  out,  to  Hel- 
mer's  and  the  audience's  stupefaction,  and  when 
the  agitated  pair  sit  down  to  "have  it  out," 
face  to  face  across  the  table,  then  indeed  the 
spectator  feels  that  a  new  thing  has  been  born 
in  drama,  and,  incidentally,  that  the  "well- 
made  play"  has  suddenly  become  as  dead  as 
Queen  Anne.  The  grimness,  the  intensity  of 
life,  are  amazing  in  this  final  scene,  where 
the  old  happy  ending  is  completely  abandoned 
for  the  first  time,  and  where  the  paradox  of 
life  is  presented  without  the  least  shuffling  or 
evasion. 

It  was  extraordinary  how  suddenly  it  was  real- 
ized that  A  Doll's  House  was  a  prodigious  per- 
formance. All  Scandinavia  rang  with  Nora's 
"declaration  of  independence."  People  left  the 
theatre,  night  after  night,  pale  with  excitement, 
arguing,  quarrelling,  challenging.  The  inner  be- 
ing had  been  unveiled  for  a  moment,  and  new 
catchwords  were  repeated  from  mouth  to  mouth. 
The  great  statement  and  reply — "No  man  sac- 
rifices his  honor,  even  for  one  he  loves,"  "Hun- 
dreds of  thousands  of  women  have  done  so!" 
roused  interminable  discussion  in  countless  family 
circles.  The  disputes  were  at  one  time  so  vio- 
lent as  to  threaten  the  peace  of  households;  a 
school  of  imitators  at  once  sprang  up  to  treat  the 


1875-82  147 

situation,  from  slightly  different  points  of  view, 
in  novel,  poem  and  drama.1 

The  universal  excitement  which  Ibsen  had 
vainly  hoped  would  be  awakened  by  The  Pillars  of 
Society  came,  when  he  was  not  expecting  it,  to 
greet  A  Doll's  House.  Ibsen  was  stirred  by  the 
reception  of  his  latest  play  into  a  mood  rather 
different  from  that  which  he  expressed  at  any 
other  period.  As  has  often  been  said,  he  did 
not  pose  as  a  prophet  or  as  a  reformer,  but  it 
did  occur  to  him  now  that  he  might  exercise  a 
strong  moral  influence,  and  in  writing  to  his 
German  translator,  Ludwig  Passarge,  he  said 
(June  1 6,  1880): 

Everything  that  I  have  written  has  the  closest  possible  con- 
nection with  what  I  have  lived  through,  even  if  it  has  not 
been  my  own  personal  experience;  in  every  new  poem  or 
play  I  have  aimed  at  my  own  spiritual  emancipation  and 
purification — for  a  man  shares  the  responsibility  and  the 
guilt  of  the  society  to  which  he  belongs. 

It  was  in  this  spirit  of  unusual  gravity  that  he 
sat  down  to  the  composition  of  Ghosts.  There  is 
little  or  no  record  of  how  he  occupied  himself  at 
Munich  and  Berchtesgaden  in  1880,  except  that 
in  March  he  began  to  sketch,  and  then  aban- 

1  The  reader  who  desires  to  obtain  further  light  on  the  technical 
quality  of  A  Doll's  House  can  do  no  better  than  refer  to  Mr.  William 
Archer's  elaborate  analysis  of  it  (Fortnightly  Review,  July,  1906).. 


148  IBSEN 

doned,  what  afterwards  became  The  Lady  from 
the  Sea.  In  the  autumn  of  that  year,  indulging 
once  more  his  curious  restlessness,  he  took  all  his 
household  gods  and  goods  again  to  Rome.  His 
thoughts  turned  away  from  dramatic  art  for  a 
moment,  and  he  planned  an  autobiography, 
which  was  to  deal  with  the  gradual  development 
of  his  mind,  and  to  be  called  From  Skien  to  Rome. 
Whether  he  actually  wrote  any  of  this  seems  un- 
certain; that  he  should  have  planned  it  shows  a 
certain  sense  of  maturity,  a  suspicion  that,  now 
in  his  fifty-third  year,  he  might  be  nearly  at  the 
end  of  his  resources.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  he  was 
just  entering  upon  a  new  inheritance.  In  the 
summer  of  1881  he  went,  as  usual  now,  to  Sor- 
rento, and  there1  the  plot  of  Ghosts  revealed  itself 
to  him.  This  work  was  composed  with  more 
than  Ibsen's  customary  care,  and  was  published 
at  the  beginning  of  December,  in  an  edition  of  ten 
thousand  copies. 

Before  the  end  of  1881  Ibsen  was  aware  of  the 
terrific  turmoil  which  Ghosts  had  begun  to  oc- 
casion. He  wrote  to  Passarge:  "My  new  play 

1  Note. — So  the  authorities  state:  but  in  an  unpublished  letter  to 
myself,  dated  Rome,  November  26,  1880,  I  find  Ibsen  saying,  "Just 
now  I  am  beginning  to  exercise  my  thoughts  over  a  new  drama ;  I 
hope  I  shall  finish  it  in  the  course  of  next  summer."  It  seems  to  have 
been  already  his  habit  to  meditate  long  about  a  subject  before  it  took 
any  definite  literary  form  in  his  mind. 


1875-82  149 

has  now  appeared,  and  has  occasioned  a  terrible 
uproar  in  the  Scandinavian  press.  Every  day  I 
receive  letters  and  newspaper  articles  decrying  or 
praising  it.  I  consider  it  absolutely  impossible 
that  any  German  theatre  will  accept  the  play  at 
present.  I  hardly  believe  that  they  will  dare  to 
play  it  in  any  Scandinavian  country  for  some 
time  to  come."  It  was,  in  fact,  not  acted  pub- 
licly anywhere  until  1883,  when  the  Swedes  vent- 
ured to  try  it,  and  the  Germans  followed  in  1887. 
The  Danes  resisted  it  much  longer. 

Ibsen  declared  that  he  was  quite  prepared  for 
the  hubbub;  he  would  doubtless  have  been  much 
disappointed  if  it  had  not  taken  place;  never- 
theless, he  was  disconcerted  at  the  volume  and 
the  violence  of  the  attacks.  Yet  he  must  have 
known  that  in  the  existing  condition  of  society, 
and  the  limited  range  of  what  was  then  thought 
a  defensible  criticism  of  that  condition,  Ghosts 
must  cause  a  virulent  scandal.  There  has  been, 
especially  in  Germany,  a  great  deal  of  medico- 
philosophical  exposure  of  the  under-side  of  life 
since  1880.  It  is  hardly  possible  that,  there,  or 
in  any  really  civilized  country,  an  analysis  of  the 
causes  of  what  is,  after  all,  one  of  the  simplest  and 
most  conventional  forms  of  hereditary  disease 
could  again  excite  such  a  startling  revulsion  of 
feeling.  Krafft-Ebing  and  a  crew  of  investigators, 


150  IBSEN 

Strindberg,  Brieux,  Hauptmann,  and  a  score  of 
probing  playwrights  all  over  the  Continent,  have 
gone  further  and  often  fared  much  worse  than 
Ibsen  did  when  he  dived  into  the  family  history 
of  Kammerherre  Alving.  When  we  read  Ghosts 
to-day  we  cannot  recapture  the  "new  shudder" 
which  it  gave  us  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago.  Yet 
it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  the  publication  of 
it,  in  that  hide-bound  time,  was  an  act  of  extraor- 
dinary courage.  Georg  Brandes,  always  clear- 
sighted, was  alone  in  being  able  to  perceive  at 
once  that  Ghosts  was  no  attack  on  society,  but 
an  effort  to  place  the  responsibilities  of  men  and 
women  on  a  wholesomer  and  surer  footing,  by 
direct  reference  to  the  relation  of  both  to  the  child. 
When  the  same  eminent  critic,  however,  went 
on  to  say  that  Ghosts  was  "a  poetic  treatment  of 
the  question  of  heredity,"  it  was  more  difficult 
to  follow  him.  Now  that  the  flash  and  shock  of 
the  playwright's  audacity  are  discounted,  it  is 
natural  to  ask  ourselves  whether,  as  a  work  of 
pure  art,  Ghosts  stands  high  among  Ibsen's  writ- 
ings. I  confess,  for  my  own  part,  that  it  seems 
to  me  deprived  of  "poetic"  treatment,  that  is 
to  say,  of  grace,  charm  and  suppleness,  to  an 
almost  fatal  extent.  It  is  extremely  original,  ex- 
tremely vivid  and  stimulating,  but,  so  far  as  a 
foreigner  may  judge,  the  dialogue  seems  stilted 


1875-82  151 

and  uniform,  the  characters,  with  certain  obvious 
exceptions,  rather  types  than  persons.  In  the 
old  fighting  days  it  was  necessary  to  praise  Ghosts 
with  extravagance,  because  the  vituperation  of 
the  enemy  was  so  stupid  and  offensive,  but  now 
that  there  are  no  serious  adversaries  left,  cooler 
judgment  admits — not  one  word  that  the  idiot- 
adversary  said,  but — that  there  are  more  con- 
vincing plays  than  Ghosts  in  Ibsen's  repertory. 

Up  to  this  time,  Ibsen  had  been  looked  upon 
as  the  mainstay  of  the  Conservative  party  in 
Norway,  in  opposition  to  Bjornson,  who  led  the 
Radicals.  But  the  author  of  Ghosts,  who  was 
accused  of  disseminating  anarchism  and  nihilism, 
was  now  smartly  drummed  out  of  the  Tory  camp 
without  being  welcomed  among  the  Liberals. 
Each  party  was  eager  to  disown  him.  He  was 
like  Coriolanus,  when  he  was  deserted  by  nobles 
and  people  alike,  and 

suffer'd  by  the  voice  of  slaves  to  be 
Whoop'd  out  of  Rome. 

The  situation  gave  Ibsen  occasion,  from  the  per- 
spective of  his  exile,  to  form  some  impressions  of 
political  life  which  were  at  once  pungent  and 
dignified : 

"I  am  more  and  more  confirmed"  [he  said,  Jan,  3,  1882] 
"in  my  belief  that  there  is  something  demoralizing  in  politics 


152  IBSEN 

and  parties.  I,  at  any  rate,  shall  never  be  able  to  join  a 
party  which  has  the  majority  on  its  side.  Bjornson  says, 
'The  majority  is  always  right';  and  as  a  practical  politician 
he  is  bound,  I  suppose,  to  say  so.  I,  on  the  contrary,  of 
necessity  say,  'The  minority  is  always  right.'" 

In  order  to  place  this  view  clearly  before  his 
countrymen,  he  set  about  composing  the  extremely 
vivid  and  successful  play,  perhaps  the  most  suc- 
cessful pamphlet-play  that  ever  was  written, 
which  was  to  put  forward  in  the  clearest  light  the 
claim  of  the  minority.  He  was  very  busy  with 
preparations  for  it  all  through  the  summer  of 
1882,  which  he  spent  at  what  was  now  to  be  for 
many  years  his  favorite  summer  resort,  Gossen- 
sass  in  the  Tyrol,  a  place  which  is  consecrated  to 
the  memory  of  Ibsen  in  the  way  that  Pornic  be- 
longs to  Robert  Browning  and  the  Bel  Alp  to 
Tyndall,  holiday  homes  in  foreign  countries,  dedi- 
cated to  blissful  work  without  disturbance.  Here, 
at  a  spot  now  officially  named  the  "  Ibsenplatz," 
he  composed  The  Enemy  of  the  People,  engrossed 
in  his  invention  as  was  his  wont,  reading  nothing 
and  thinking  of  nothing  but  of  the  persons  whose 
history  he  was  weaving.  Oddly  enough,  he 
thought  that  this,  too,  was  to  be  a  "placable" 
play,  written  to  amuse  and  stimulate,  but  calculated 
to  wound  nobody's  feelings.  The  fact  was  that 
Ibsen,  like  some  ocelot  or  panther  of  the  rocks,  had 


1875-82  '53 

a  paw  much  heavier  than  he  himself  realized, 
and  his  "play,"  in  both  senses,  was  a  very  serious 
affair,  when  he  descended  to  sport  with  common 
humanity. 

Another  quotation,  this  time  from  a  letter  to 
Brandes,  must  be  given  to  show  what  Ibsen's 
attitude  was  at  this  moment  to  his  fatherland  and 
to  his  art: 

"When  I  think  how  slow  and  heavy  and  dull  the  general 
intelligence  is  at  home,  when  I  notice  the  low  standard  by 
which  everything  is  judged,  a  deep  despondency  comes  over 
me,  and  it  often  seems  to  me  that  I  might  just  as  well  end 
my  literary  activity  at  once.  They  really  do  not  need  'poetry 
at  home;  they  get  along  so  well  with  the  party  newspapers 
and  the  Lutheran  Weekly.'" 

If  Ibsen  thought  that  he  was  offering  them 
"poetry"  in  The  Enemy  of  the  People,  he  spoke 
in  a  Scandinavian  sense.  Our  criticism  has  never 
opened  its  arms  wide  enough  to  embrace  all 
imaginative  literature  as  poetry,  and  in  the  Eng- 
lish sense  nothing  in  the  world's  drama  is  denser 
or  more  unqualified  prose  than  The  Enemy  of 
the  People,  without  a  tinge  of  romance  or  rhetoric, 
as  "unideal"  as  a  blue-book.  It  is,  nevertheless, 
one  of  the  most  certainly  successful  of  its  author's 
writings;  as  a  stage-play  it  rivets  the  attention;  as 
a  pamphlet  it  awakens  irresistible  sympathy;  as 
a  specimen  of  dramatic  art,  its  construction  and 


I54  IBSEN 

evolution  are  almost  faultless.  Under  a  trans- 
parent allegory,  it  describes  the  treatment  which 
Ibsen  himself  had  received  at  the  hands  of  the  Nor- 
wegian public  for  venturing  to  tell  them  that  their 
spa  should  be  drained  before  visitors  were  invited 
to  flock  to  it.  Nevertheless,  the  playwright  has 
not  made  the  mistake  of  identifying  his  own 
figure  with  that  of  Dr.  Stockmann,  who  is  an  en- 
tirely independent  creation.  Mr.  Archer  has  com- 
pared the  hero  with  Colonel  Newcombe,  whose 
loquacious  amicability  he  does  share,  but  Stock- 
mann's  character  has  much  more  energy  and  initi- 
ative than  Colonel  Newcombe's,  whom  we  could 
never  fancy  rousing  himself  "  to  purge  society." 

Ibsen's  practical  wisdom  in  taking  the  bull  by 
the  horns  in  his  reply  to  the  national  reception  of 
Ghosts  was  proved  by  the  instant  success  of  The 
Enemy  of  the  People.  Presented  to  the  public  in 
this  new  and  audacious  form,  the  problem  of  a 
"moral  water-supply"  struck  sensible  Norwegians 
as  less  absurd  and  less  dangerous  than  they  had 
conceived  it  to  be.  The  reproof  was  mordant, 
and  the  worst  offenders  crouched  under  the  lash. 
Ghosts  itself  was  still,  for  some  time,  tabooed, 
but  The  Enemy  of  the  People  received  a  cordial 
welcome,  and  has  remained  ever  since  one  of  the 
most  popular  of  Ibsen's  writings.  It  is  still  ex- 
tremely effective  on  the  stage,  and  as  it  is  lightened 


1875-82  155 

by  more  humor  than  the  author  is  commonly  will- 
ing to  employ,  it  attracts  even  those  who  are  hos- 
tile to  the  intrusion  of  anything  solemn  behind  the 
footlights. 


CHAPTER  VII 
1883-91 

WITH  the  appearance  of  An  Enemy  of  the 
People,  which  was  published  in  November,  1882, 
Ibsen  entered  upon  a  new  stage  in  his  career. 
He  had  completely  broken  with  the  Conservative 
party  in  Norway,  without  having  gratified  or  won 
the  confidence  of  the  Liberals.  He  was  now  in 
personal  relations  of  friendliness  with  Bjornson, 
whose  generous  approval  of  his  work  as  a  dram- 
atist sustained  his  spirits,  but  his  own  individual- 
ism had  been  intensified  by  the  hostile  reception  of 
Ghosts.  His  life  was  now  divided  between  Rome 
in  the  winter  and  Gossensass  in  the  summer,  and 
in  the  Italian  city,  as  in  the  Tyrolese  village,  he 
wandered  solitary,  taciturn,  absorbed  in  his  own 
thoughts.  His  meditations  led  him  more  and  more 
into  a  lonely  state.  He  floated,  as  on  a  prophet's 
carpet,  between  the  political  heavens  and  earth, 
capriciously  refusing  to  ascend  or  to  alight.  He 
had  come  to  a  sceptical  stage  in  his  mental  evolu- 
tion, a  stage  in  which  he  was  to  remain  for  a 

156 


1883-91  i57 

considerable  time,  gradually  modifying  it  in  a 
Conservative  direction.  One  wonders  what  the 
simple-minded  and  stalwart  Bjornson  thought  of 
being  quietly  told  (March  28,  1884)  that  the  lower 
classes  are  nowhere  liberal-minded  or  self-sacri- 
ficing, and  that  "in  the  views  expressed  by  our 
[Norwegian]  peasants  there  is  not  an  atom  more 
of  real  Liberalism  than  is  to  be  found  among  the 
ultramontane  peasantry  of  the  Tyrol."  In  poli- 
tics Ibsen  had  now  become  a  pagan;  "I  do  not 
believe,"  he  said,  "in  the  emancipatory  power  of 
political  measures,  nor  have  I  much  confidence 
in  the  altruism  and  good  will  of  those  in  power." 
This  sense  of  the  uselessness  of  effort  is  strongly 
marked  in  the  course  of  the  next  work  on  which 
he  was  engaged,  the  very  brilliant,  but  saturnine 
and  sardonic  tragi-comedy  of  The  Wild  Duck. 
The  first  sketch  of  it  was  made  during  the  spring 
of  1884  in  Rome,  but  the  dramatist  took  it  to 
Gossensass  with  him  for  the  finishing  touches,  and 
did  not  perfect  it  until  the  autumn.  It  is  remark- 
able that  Ibsen  invariably  speaks  of  The  Wild 
Ducky  when  he  mentions  it  in  his  correspondence, 
in  terms  of  irony.  He  calls  it  a  collection  of  crazy 
tricks  or  tomfooleries,  galskaber,  an  expression 
which  carries  with  it,  in  this  sense,  a  confession  of 
wilful  paradox.  In  something  of  the  same  spirit, 
Robert  Browning,  in  the  old  days  before  he  was 


158  IBSEN 

comprehended,  used  to  speak  of  "the  entirely 
unintelligible  Sordello,"  as  if,  sarcastically,  to  meet 
criticism  half-way. 

When  The  Wild  Duck  was  first  circulated 
among  Ibsen's  admirers,  it  was  received  with  some 
bewilderment.  Quite  slowly  the  idea  received 
acceptance  that  the  hitherto  so  serious  and  even 
angry  satirist  was,  to  put  it  plainly,  laughing  at 
himself.  The  faithful  were  reluctant  to  concede  it. 
But  one  sees  now,  clearly  enough,  that  in  a  sense  it 
was  so.  I  have  tried  to  show,  we  imagine  Ibsen 
saying,  that  your  hypocritical  sentimentality  needs 
correction — you  live  in  "A  Doll's  House."  I 
have  dared  to  point  out  to  you  that  your  society 
is  physically  and  morally  rotten  and  full  of 
"Ghosts."  You  have  repudiated  my  honest 
efforts  as  a  reformer,  and  called  me  "An  Enemy 
of  the  People."  Very  well,  then,  have  it  so  if 
you  please.  What  a  fool  am  I  to  trouble  about 
you  at  all.  Go  down  a  steep  place  in  Gadara 
and  drown  yourselves.  If  it  amuses  you,  it  can 
amuse  me  also  to  be  looked  upon  as  Gregers 
Werle.  Vogue  la  galere.  "But  as  the  play  is 
neither  to  deal  with  the  Supreme  Court,  nor  the 
right  of  absolute  veto,  nor  even  with  the  removal 
of  the  sign  of  the  union  from  the  flag,"  burning 
questions  then  and  Afterwards  in  Norwegian 
politics,  "it  can  hardly  count  upon  arousing  much 


1883-91  159 

interest  in  Norway";  it  will,  however,  amuse  me 
immensely  to  point  out  the  absurdity  of  my  caring. 
It  is  in  reading  The  Wild  Duck  that  for  the  first 
time  the  really  astonishing  resemblance  which 
Ibsen  bears  to  Euripedes  becomes  apparent  to  us. 
This  is  partly  because  the  Norwegian  dramatist 
now  relinquishes  any  other  central  object  than 
the  presentation  to  his  audience  of  the  clash  of 
temperament,  and  partly  because  here  at  last, 
and  for  the  future  always,  he  separates  himself 
from  everything  that  is  not  catastrophe.  More 
than  any  earlier  play,  more  even  than  Ghosts,  The 
Wild  Duck  is  an  avalanche  which  has  begun  to 
move,  and  with  a  movement  unaffected  by  the 
incidents  of  the  plot,  long  before  the  curtain 
rises.  The  later  plays  of  Ibsen,  unlike  almost  all 
other  modern  dramas,  depend  upon  nothing  that 
happens  while  they  are  being  exhibited,  but  rush 
downwards  to  their  inevitable  close  in  obedience 
to  a  series  of  long-precedent  impulses.  In  order 
to  gain  this  effect,  the  dramatist  has  to  be  ac- 
quainted with  everything  that  has  ever  happened 
to  his  personages,  and  we  are  informed  that  Ibsen 
used  to  build  up  in  his  own  mind,  for  months  at 
a  time,  the  past  history  of  his  puppets.  He  was 
now  master  of  this  practice.  We  are  not  surprised, 
therefore,  to  find  one  of  the  most  penetrating  of 
dramatic  critics  remarking  of  The  Wild  Duck  that 


160  IBSEN 

"never  before  had  the  poet  displayed  such  an 
amazing  power  of  fascinating  and  absorbing  us 
by  the  gradual  withdrawal  of  veil  after  veil  from 
the  past." 

The  result  of  a  searching  determination  to  deal 
with  personal  and  not  typical  forms  of  tempera- 
ment is  seen  in  the  firmness  of  the  portraiture  in 
The  Wild  Duck,  where,  I  think,  less  than  ever 
before,  is  to  be  found  a  trace  of  that  incoherency 
which  is  to  be  met  with  occasionally  in  all  the 
earlier  works  of  Ibsen,  and  which  seems  like  the 
effect  of  a  sudden  caprice  or  change  of  the  point 
of  view.  There  is,  so  far  as  I  can  judge,  no  trace 
of  this  in  The  Wild  Duck,  where  the  continuity 
of  aspect  is  extraordinary.  Confucius  assures  us 
that  if  we  tell  him  our  past,  he  will  tell  us  our 
future,  and  although  several  of  the  characters  in 
The  Wild  Duck  are  the  most  sordid  of  Ibsen's 
creations,  the  author  has  made  himself  so  deeply 
familiar  with  them  that  they  are  absolutely  life- 
like. The  detestable  Hialmar,  in  whom,  by  the 
looking-glass  of  a  disordered  liver,  any  man  may 
see  a  picture  of  himself;  the  pitiable  Gregers 
Werle,  perpetually  thirteenth  at  table,  with  his 
genius  for  making  an  utter  mess  of  other  people's 
lives;  the  vulgar  Gina;  the  beautiful  girlish  figure 
of  the  little  martyred  Hedvig — all  are  wholly  real 
and  living  persons. 


1883-91  i6i 

The  subject  of  the  play,  of  course,  is  one  which 
we  do  not  expect,  or  had  not  hitherto  expected, 
from  Ibsen.  It  is  the  danger  of  "a  sick  con- 
science" and  the  value  of  illusion.  Society  may 
be  full  of  poisonous  vapors  and  be  built  on  a  frame- 
work of  lies;  it  is  nevertheless  prudent  to  consider 
whether  the  ideal  advantages  of  disturbing  it 
overweigh  the  practical  disadvantages,  and  above 
all  to  bear  in  mind  that  if  you  rob  the  average 
man  of  his  illusions,  you  are  almost  sure  to  rob 
him  of  his  happiness.  The  topsy-turvy  nature  of 
this  theme  made  Ibsen  as  nearly  "rollicking"  as 
he  ever  became  in  his  life.  We  can  imagine  that 
as  he  wrote  the  third  act  of  The  Wild  Duck,  where 
so  horrible  a  luncheon  party — "we'll  all  keep  a 
corner" — gloats  over  the  herring  salad,  he  indulged 
again  and  again  in  those  puffs  of  soundless  and 
formidable  mirth  which  Mr.  Johan  Paulsen  de- 
scribes as  so  surprising  an  element  of  conversa- 
tion with  Ibsen. 

To  the  gossip  of  that  amiable  Boswell,  too,  we 
must  turn  for  a  valuable  impression  of  the  solidi- 
fication of  Ibsen's  habits  which  began  about  this 
time,  and  which  marked  them  even  before  he  left 
Munich.  He  had  now  successfully  separated  him- 
self from  all  society,  and  even  his  family  saw  him 
only  at  meals.  Visitors  could  not  penetrate  to  him, 
but,  if  sufficiently  courageous,  must  hang  about 


i6z  IBSEN 

on  the  staircase,  hoping  to  catch  him  for  a  mo- 
ment as  he  hurried  out  to  the  cafe.  Within  his 
study,  into  which  the  daring  Paulsen  occasion- 
ally ventured,  Ibsen,  we  are  to  believe,  did  nothing 
at  all,  but  "sat  bent  over  the  pacific  ocean  of  his 
own  mind,  which  mirrored  for  him  a  world  far 
more  fascinating,  vast  and  rich  than  that  which 
lay  spread  around  him."1 

And  now  the  celebrated  afternoons  at  the  cafes 
had  begun.  In  Rome  Ibsen  had  his  favorite 
table,  and  he  would  sit  obliquely  facing  a  mirror 
in  which,  half  hidden  by  a  newspaper  and  by 
the  glitter  of  his  gold  spectacles,  he  could  com- 
mand a  sight  of  the  whole  restaurant,  and  especially 
of  the  door  into  the  street.  Every  one  who  entered, 
every  couple  that  conversed,  every  movement  of 
the  scene,  gave  something  to  those  untiring  eyes. 
The  newspaper  and  the  cafe  mirror — these  were 
the  books  which,  for  the  future,  Ibsen  was  almost 
exclusively  to  study;  and  out  of  the  gestures  of 
a  pair  of  friends  at  a  table,  out  of  a  paragraph 
in  a  newspaper,  even  out  of  the  terms  of  an  ad- 
vertisement, he  could  build  up  a  drama.  Inces- 
sant observation  of  real  life,  incessant  capture 
of  unaffected,  unconsidered  phrases,  actual  liv- 
ing experience  leaping  in  his  hands  like  a  captive 
wild  animal,  this  was  now  the  substance  from 

1  Samliv  nied  Ibsen,  1906,  p.  30. 


1883-91  163 

which  all  Ibsen's  dreams  and  dramas  were  woven. 
Concentration  of  attention  on  the  vital  play  of 
character,  this  was  his  one  interest. 

Out  of  this  he  was  roused  by  a  sudden  deter- 
mination to  go  at  last  and  see  for  himself  what 
life  in  Norway  was  really  like.  A  New  England 
wit  once  denied  that  a  certain  brilliant  and  Eu- 
rope-loving American  author  was  a  cosmopolitan. 
"No,"  he  said,  "a  cosmopolitan  is  at  home  even 
in  his  own  country."  Ibsen  began  to  doubt 
whether  he  was  not  too  far  off  to  follow  events 
in  Norway — and  these  were  now  beginning  to  be 
very  exciting — well  enough  to  form  an  inde- 
pendent judgment  about  them;  and  after  twenty 
years  of  exile  there  is  no  doubt  that  the  question 
was  fairly  put.  The  Wild  Duck  had  been  pub- 
lished in  November,  1884,  and  had  been  acted 
everywhere  in  Scandinavia  with  great  success. 
The  critics  and  the  public  were  agreed  for  the 
first  time  that  Ibsen  was  a  very  great  national 
genius,  and  that  if  Norway  was  not  proud  of  him 
it  would  make  a  fool  of  itself  in  the  eyes  of  Europe. 
Ibsen  had  said  that  Norway  was  a  barbarous 
country,  inhabited  by  two  millions  of  cats  and 
dogs,  but  so  many  agreeable  and  highly-civilized 
compliments  found  their  way  to  him  in  Rome 
that  he  began  to  fancy  that  the  human  element 
was  beginning  to  be  introduced.  At  all  events, 


164  IBSEN 

he  would  see  for  himself,  and  in  June,  1885,  in- 
stead of  stopping  at  Gossensass,  he  pushed  bravely 
on  and  landed  in  Christiania. 

At  first  all  went  well,  but  from  the  very  begin- 
ning of  the  visit  he  observed,  or  thought  he  ob- 
served, awkward  phenomena.  The  country  was 
thrilled  with  political  excitement,  and  it  vibrated 
with  rhetorical  resolutions  which  seemed  to  Ibsen 
very  empty.  He  had  a  constitutional  horror  of 
purely  theoretical  questions,  and  these  were  oc- 
cupying Norway  from  one  end  to  the  other.  The 
King's  veto,  the  consular  difficulty,  the  Swedish 
emblem  in  the  national  flag,  these  were  the  sub- 
jects of  frenzied  discussion,  and  in  none  of  these 
did  Ibsen  take  any  sort  of  pleasure.  He  was  not 
politically  far-sighted,  it  must  be  confessed,  nor 
did  he  guess  what  practical  proportions  these 
"theoretical  questions"  were  to  assume  in  the 
immediate  future. 

That  great  writer  and  delightful  associate,  the 
Swedish  poet,  Count  Snoilsky,  one  of  the  few 
whose  company  never  wearied  or  irritated  Ibsen, 
joined  him  in  the  far  north.  They  spent  a 
pleasant,  quiet  time  together  at  Molde,  that  en- 
chanting little  sub-arctic  town,  where  it  looks 
southward  over  the  shining  fjord,  with  the  Roms- 
dalhorn  forever  guarding  the  mountainous  horizon. 
Here  no  politics  intruded,  and  Ibsen,  when  Snoil- 


1883-91  165 

sky  had  left  him,  already  thinking  of  a  new  drama, 
lingered  on  at  Molde,  spending  hours  on  hours  at 
the  end  of  the  jetty,  gazing  into  the  clear,  cold  sea. 
His  passion  for  the  sea  had  never  betrayed  him, 
and  at  Rome,  where  he  had  long  given  up  going 
to  any  galleries  or  studios,  he  still  haunted  the 
house  of  a  Norwegian  marine  painter,  Nils  Han- 
steen,  whose  sketches  reminded  him  of  old  days 
and  recollected  waters. 

But  the  autumn  comes  on  apace  in  these  high 
latitudes,  and  Ibsen  had  to  return  to  Christiania 
with  its  torchlight  processions,  and  late  noisy 
feasts,  and  triumphant  revolutionary  oratory. 
He  disliked  it  extremely,  and  he  made  up  his 
mind  to  go  back  to  the  indifferent  South,  where 
people  did  not  worry  about  such  things.  Unfort- 
unately, the  inhabitants  of  Christiania  did  not 
leave  him  alone.  They  were  not  content  to  have 
him  among  them  as  a  retired  observer,  they 
wanted  to  make  him  stand  out  definitely  on  one 
political  side  or  the  other.  He  was  urged,  at  the 
end  of  September,  to  receive  the  inevitable  torch- 
light procession  planned  in  his  honor  by  the 
Union  of  Norwegian  Students.  He  was  astute 
enough  to  see  that  this  might  compromise  his 
independence,  but  he  was  probably  too  self-con- 
scious in  believing  that  a  trap  was  being  laid  for 
him.  He  said  that,  not  having  observed  that  his 


166  IBSEN 

presence  gave  the  Union  any  great  pleasure,  he 
did  not  care  to  have  its  expression  of  great  joy  at 
his  departure.  This  was  not  polite,  for  it  does 
not  appear  that  the  students  had  any  idea  that 
he  intended  to  depart.  He  would  not  address  a 
reply  to  the  Union  as  a  body,  but  to  "my  friends 
among  the  students." 

A  committee  called  upon  him  to  beg  him  to 
reconsider  his  resolution,  but  he  roundly  told 
them  that  he  knew  that  they  were  reactionaries, 
and  wanted  to  annex  him  to  their  party,  and  that 
he  was  not  blind  to  their  tricks.  They  withdrew 
in  confusion,  and  Ibsen,  in  an  agony  of  nervous- 
ness, determined  to  put  the  sea  between  himself 
and  their  machinations.  Early  in  October  he 
retreated,  or  rather  fled,  to  Copenhagen,  and 
thence  to  Munich,  where  he  breathed  again. 
Meanwhile,  the  extreme  liberal  faction  among 
the  students  claimed  that  his  action  had  meant 
that  he  was  heart  and  soul  with  them,  as  against 
the  reactionaries.  A  young  Mr.  Ove  Rode,  who 
had  interviewed  him,  took  upon  himself  to  say 
that  these  were  Ibsen's  real  sentiments.  Ibsen 
fairly  stamped  with  rage,  and  declared,  in  furious 
communications,  that  all  these  things  were  done 
on  purpose.  "It  was  an  opportunity  to  insult 
a  poet  which  it  would  have  been  a  sad  pity  to 
lose,"  he  remarked,  with  quivering  pen.  A  re- 


1883-91  i6; 

verberant  controversy  sprang  up  in  the  Nor- 
wegian newspapers,  and  Ibsen,  in  his  Bavarian 
harbor  of  refuge,  continued  to  vibrate  all  through 
the  winter  of  1885.  The  exile's  return  to  his  native 
country  had  proved  to  be  far  from  a  success. 

Already  his  new  play  was  taking  shape,  and  the 
success  of  his  great  personal  ambition,  namely 
that  his  son,  Sigurd,  should  be  taken  with  honor 
into  the  diplomatic  service  of  his  country,  did 
much  to  calm  his  spirits.  Ibsen  was  growing  rich 
now,  as  well  as  famous,  and  if  only  the  Nor- 
wegians would  let  him  alone,  he  might  well  be 
happy.  The  new  play  was  Rosmersholm,  and  it 
took  its  impulse  from  a  speech  which  Ibsen  had 
made  during  his  journey,  at  Trondhjem,  where 
he  expounded  the  gospel  of  individualism  to  a 
respectful  audience  of  workingmen,  and  had  laid 
down  the  necessity  of  introducing  an  aristocratic 
strain,  et  adeligt  element,  into  the  life  of  a  truly 
democratic  state,  a  strain  which  woman  and 
labor  were  to  unite  in  developing.  He  said: 
"I  am  thinking,  of  course,  not  of  birth,  nor  of 
money,  nor  even  of  intellect,  but  of  the  nobility 
which  grows  out  of  character.  It  is  character 
alone  which  can  make  us  free."  This  nobility  of 
character  must  be  fostered,  mainly,  by  the  united 
efforts  of  motherhood  and  labor.  This  was  quite 
a  new  creed  in  Norway,  and  it  bewildered  his 


168  IBSEN 

hearers,  but  it  is  remarkable  to  notice  how  the 
best  public  feeling  in  Scandinavia  has  responded 
to  the  appeal,  and  how  little  surprise  the  present 
generation  would  express  at  a  repetition  of  such 
sentiments.  And  out  of  this  idea  of  "nobility" 
of  public  character  Rosmersholm  directly  sprang. 
We  are  not  left  to  conjecture  in  this  respect. 
In  a  letter  to  Bjorn  Kristensen  (February  13, 
1887),  Ibsen  deliberately  explained,  while  correct- 
ing a  misconception  of  the  purpose  of  Rosmers- 
holm, that  "  the  play  deals  with  the  struggle  which 
all  serious-minded  human  beings  have  to  wage 
with  themselves  in  order  to  bring  their  lives  into 
harmony  with  their  convictions.  .  .  .  Conscience 
is  very  conservative.  It  has  its  deep  roots  in 
tradition  and  the  past  generally,  and  hence  the 
conflict."  When  we  come  to  read  Rosmersholm 
it  is  not  difficult  to  see  how  this  order  of  ideas 
dominated  Ibsen's  mind  when  he  wrote  it.  The 
mansion  called  by  that  name  is  typical  of  the 
ancient  traditions  of  Norwegian  bourgeois  aris- 
tocracy, which  are  not  to  be  subservient  to  such 
modern  and  timid  conservatism  as  is  represented 
by  Rector  Kroll,  with  his  horror  of  all  things  new 
because  they  are  new.  The  Rosmer  strain,  in 
its  inherent  nobility,  is  to  be  superior  to  a  craven 
horror  of  the  democracy,  and  is  to  show,  by  the 
courage  with  which  it  fulfils  its  personal  destiny, 


1883-91  169 

that  it  looks  above  and  beyond  all  these  momen- 
tary prejudices,  and  accepts,  from  all  hands, 
whatever  is  wise  and  of  good  report. 

The  misfortune  is  that  Ibsen,  in  unconscious 
bondage  to  his  ideas,  did  not  construct  his  drama 
sturdily  enough  on  realistic  lines.  While  not  one 
of  his  works  is  more  suggestive  than  Rosmersholm, 
there  is  not  one  which  gives  the  unbeliever  more 
opportunity  to  blaspheme.  This  ancestral  house 
of  a  great  rich  race,  which  is  kept  up  by  the  minis- 
trations of  a  single  aged  female  servant,  stands  in 
pure  Cloud-Cuckoo  Land.  The  absence  of  prac- 
tical amenities  in  the  Rosmer  family  might  be  set 
down  to  eccentricity,  if  all  the  other  personages 
were  not  equally  ill-provided.  Rebecca,  glorious 
heroine  according  to  some  admirers,  "criminal, 
thief  and  murderess,"  as  another  admirer  pleonas- 
tically  describes  her,  is  a  sort  of  troll;  nobody  can 
explain — and  yet  an  explanation  seems  requisite — 
what  she  does  in  the  house  of  Rosmer.  In  his 
eagerness  to  work  out  a  certain  sequence  of  philo- 
sophical ideas,  the  playwright  for  once  neglected 
to  be  plausible.  It  is  a  very  remarkable  feature 
of  Rosmersholm  that  in  it,  for  the  first  time,  and 
almost  for  the  last,  Ibsen,  in  the  act  of  theorizing, 
loses  his  hold  upon  reality.  He  places  his  in- 
genious, elaborate  and — given  the  premises — in- 
evitable denouement  in  a  scene  scarcely  more 


1 70  IBSEN 

credible  than  that  of  a  Gilbert  and  Sullivan  opera, 
and  not  one-tenth  as  amusing.  Following,  as  it 
does,  immediately  on  the  heels  of  The  Wild  Duck, 
which  was  as  remarkable  a  slice  of  real  life  as  was 
ever  brought  before  a  theatrical  audience,  the 
artificiality  of  Rosmersholm  shows  Ibsen  as  an 
artist  clearly  stepping  backward  that  he  may  leap 
the  further  forward. 

In  other  words,  Rosmersholm  is  the  proof  of 
Ibsen's  desire  to  conquer  another  field  of  drama. 
He  had  now  for  some  years  rejected  with  great 
severity  all  temptations  from  the  poetic  spirit, 
which  was  nevertheless  ineradicable  in  him.  He 
had  wished  to  produce  on  the  mind  of  the  spec- 
tator no  other  impression  than  that  he  was  ob- 
serving something  which  had  actually  happened, 
exactly  in  the  way  and  the  words  in  which  it 
would  happen.  He  had  formulated  to  the  actress, 
Lucie  Wolf,  the  principle  that  ideal  dramatic 
poetry  should  be  considered  extinct,  "like  some 
preposterous  animal  form  of  prehistoric  times." 
But  the  soul  of  man  cannot  be  fed  with  a  stone, 
and  Ibsen  had  now  discovered  that  perfectly 
prosaic  "slices  of  life"  may  be  salutary  and  valu- 
able on  occasion,  but  that  sooner  or  later  a  poet 
asks  for  more.  He,  therefore,  a  poet  if  ever  there 
was  one,  had  grown  weary  of  the  self-made  law 
by  which  he  had  shut  himself  out  from  Paradise. 


1883-91  i;i 

He  determined,  grudgingly,  and  hardly  know- 
ing how  to  set  about  it,  that  he  would  once  more 
give  the  spiritual  and  the  imaginative  qualities 
their  place  in  his  work.  These  had  now  been 
excluded  for  nearly  twenty  years,  since  the  publi- 
cation of  Peer  Gynt,  and  he  would  not  resume 
them  so  far  as  to  write  his  dramas  again  in  verse. 
Verse  in  drama  was  doomed;  or  if  not,  it  was  at 
least  a  juvenile  and  fugitive  skill  not  to  be  rashly 
picked  up  again  by  a  business-like  bard  of  sixty. 
But  he  would  reopen  the  door  to  allegory  and 
symbol,  and  especially  to  fantastic  beauty  of 
landscape. 

The  landscape  of  Rosmersholm  has  all,  or  at 
least  much,  of  the  old  enchantment.  The  scene 
at  the  mill-dam  links  us  once  more  with  the  woods 
and  the  waters  which  we  had  lost  sight  of  since  Peer 
Gynt.  But  this  element  was  still  more  evident 
in  The  Lady  from  the  Sea,  which  was  published 
in  1888.  We  have  seen  that  Ibsen  spent  long 
hours,  in  the  summer  of  1885,  at  the  end  of  the 
pier  at  Molde,  gazing  down  into  the  waters,  or 
watching  the  steamers  arriving  and  departing, 
coming  from  the  great  sea  beyond  the  fjord  or 
going  towards  it.  As  was  his  wont,  he  stored  up 
these  impressions,  making  no  immediate  use  of 
them.  He  actually  prepared  The  Lady  from  the 
Sea  in  very  different,  although  still  marine  sur- 


172  IBSEN 

roundings.  He  went  to  Jutland,  and  settled  for 
the  summer  at  the  pretty  and  ancient,  but  very 
mild  little  town  of  Saeby,  with  the  sands  in  front 
of  him  and  rolling  woods  behind.  From  Saeby 
it  was  a  short  journey  to  Frederikshavn,  "which 
he  liked  very  much — he  could  knock  about  all  day 
among  the  shipping,  talking  to  the  sailors,  and  so 
forth.  Besides,  he  found  the  neighborhood  of 
the  sea  favorable  to  contemplation  and  con- 
structive thought."  So  Mr.  Archer,  who  visited 
him  at  Saeby;  and  I  myself,  a  year  or  two  later, 
picked  up  at  Frederikshavn  an  oral  tradition  of 
Ibsen,  with  his  hands  behind  his  back,  and  the 
frock-coat  tightly  buttoned,  stalking,  stalking 
alone  for  hours  on  the  interminable  promenade 
between  the  great  harbor  moles  of  Frederiks- 
havn, no  one  daring  to  break  in  upon  his  formi- 
dable contemplation. 

In  several  respects,  though  perhaps  not  in  con- 
centration of  effect,  The  Lady  from  the  Sea  shows  a 
distinct  advance  on  Rosmersholm.  It  is  never  dull, 
never  didactic,  as  its  predecessor  too  often  was, 
and  there  is  thrown  over  the  whole  texture  of  it 
a  glamour  of  romance,  of  mystery,  of  beauty, 
which  had  not  appeared  in  Ibsen's  work  since 
the  completion  of  Peer  Gynt.  Again,  after  the 
appearance  of  so  many  strenuous  tragedies,  it  was 
pleasant  to  welcome  a  pure  comedy.  The  Lady 


1883-91  173 

from  the  Sea1  is  connected  with  the  previous  plays 
by  its  emphatic  defence  of  individuality  and  its 
statement  of  the  imperative  necessity  of  develop- 
ing it;  but  the  tone  is  sunny,  and  without  a  tinge 
of  pessimism.  It  is  in  some  respects  the  reverse 
of  Rosmersholm;  the  bitterness  of  restrained  and 
balked  individuality,  which  ends  in  death,  being 
contrasted  with  the  sweetness  of  emancipated  and 
gratified  individuality,  which  leads  to  health  and 
peace.  To  the  remarkable  estimate  of  The  Lady 
from  the  Sea  formed  by  some  critics,  and  in  par- 
ticular by  M.  Jules  de  Gaultier,  we  shall  return 
in  a  general  consideration  of  the  symbolic  plays, 
of  which  it  is  the  earliest.  Enough  to  say  here 
that  even  those  who  did  not  plunge  so  deeply  into 
its  mysteries  found  it  a  remarkably  agreeable 
spectacle,  and  that  it  has  continued  to  be,  in 
Scandinavia  and  Germany,  one  of  the  most  popu- 
lar of  its  author's  works. 

Ibsen  left  his  little  tavern  at  Saeby  towards  the 
end  of  September,  1887,  in  consequence  of  an 
invitation  to  proceed  directly  to  Stockholm,  where 
his  Swedish  admirers,  now  very  numerous  and 
enthusiastic,  would  no  longer  be  deprived  of 
the  pleasure  of  entertaining  him  publicly.  He 
appeared  before  them,  the  breast  of  his  coat 

1  In  the  Neue  Rundschau  for  December,  1906,  there  was  published 
a  first  draft  of  The  Lady  jrom  the  Sea,  dating  as  far  back  as  1880. 


174  IBSEN 

sparkling  with  foreign  stars  and  crosses,  the  Urim 
and  Thummim  of  general  European  recognition. 
He  was  now  in  his  sixtieth  year,  and  he  had  out- 
lived all  the  obscurity  of  his  youth.  In  the  three 
Scandinavian  countries — even  in  recalcitrant  Nor- 
way— he  was  universally  hailed  as  the  greatest 
dramatist  of  the  age.  In  Germany  his  fame  was 
greater  than  that  of  any  native  writer  of  the  same 
class.  In  Italy  and  Russia  he  was  entering  on  a 
career  of  high  and  settled  popularity.  Even  in 
France  and  England  his  work  was  now  discussed 
with  that  passionate  interest  which  shows  the 
vitality  of  what  is  even,  for  the  moment,  misin- 
terpreted and  disliked.  His  admirers  at  Stock- 
holm told  him  that  he  had  taken  a  foremost  place 
in  re-creating  their  sense  of  life,  that  he  was  a 
fashioner  and  a  builder  of  new  social  forms,  that 
he  was,  indeed,  to  thousands  of  them,  the  Master- 
Builder.  The  reply  he  made  to  their  enthusiasm 
was  dignified  and  reserved,  but  it  revealed  a  sense 
of  high  gratification.  Skule's  long  doubt  was  over; 
he  believed  at  last  in  his  own  kingdom,  and  that 
the  world  would  be  ultimately  the  better  for  the 
stamp  of  his  masterful  soul  upon  its  surface. 

It  was  in  an  unusually  happy  mood  that  he  sat 
dreaming  through  the  early  part  of  the  unevent- 
ful year  1889.  But  it  gradually  sank  into  melan- 
choly when,  in  the  following  year,  he  settled  down 


1883-91 

to  the  composition  of  a  new  play  which  was  to 
treat  of  sad  thoughts  and  tragic  passions.  He 
told  Snoilsky  that  for  several  reasons  this  work 
made  very  slow  progress,  "and  it  robbed  him  of 
his  summer  holidays."  From  May  to  November, 
1890,  he  was  uninterruptedly  in  Munich  writing 
what  is  known  to  us  now  as  Hedda  Gabler.  He 
finished  it  at  last,  saying  as  he  did  so,  "It  has 
not  been  my  desire  to  deal  in  this  play  with  so- 
called  problems.  What  I  principally  wanted  to 
do  was  to  depict  human  beings,  human  emotions 
and  human  destinies,  upon  a  groundwork  of 
certain  of  the  social  conditions  and  principles  of 
the  present  day."  It  was  a  proof  of  the  immense 
growth  of  Ibsen's  celebrity  that  editions  of  Hedda 
Gabler  were  called  for  almost  simultaneously,  in 
the  winter  of  1890,  in  London,  New  York,  St. 
Petersburg,  Leipzig,  Berlin  and  Moscow,  as  well 
as  in  Copenhagen,  Stockholm  and  Christiania. 
There  was  no  other  living  author  in  the  world  at 
that  moment  who  excited  so  much  curiosity 
among  the  intellectual  classes,  and  none  who 
exercised  so  much  influence  on  the  younger 
generation  of  authors  and  thinkers. 

In  Hedda  Gabler  Ibsen  returned,  for  the  last 
time,  but  with  concentrated  vigor,  to  the  pro- 
saic ideal  of  his  central  period.  He  never  suc- 
ceeded in  being  more  objective  in  drama,  he 


176  IBSEN 

never  kept  more  closely  to  the  bare  facts  of  nature 
nor  rejected  more  vigorously  the  ornaments  of 
romance  and  rhetoric  than  in  this  amazing  play. 
There  is  no  poetic  suggestion  here,  no  species  of 
symbol,  white  horse,  or  gnawing  thing,  or  mon- 
ster from  the  sea.  I  am  wholly  in  agreement 
with  Mr.  Archer  when  he  says  that  he  finds  it 
impossible  to  extract  any  sort  of  general  idea 
from  Hedda  Gabler,  or  to  accept  it  as  a  satire  of 
any  condition  of  society.  Hedda  is  an  individual, 
not  a  type,  and  it  was  as  an  individual  that  she 
interested  Ibsen.  We  have  been  told,  since  the 
poet's  death,  that  he  was  greatly  struck  by  the 
case,  which  came  under  his  notice  at  Munich,  of 
a  German  lady  who  poisoned  herself  because  she 
was  bored  with  life,  and  had  strayed  into  a  false 
position.  Hedda  Gabler  is  the  realization  of  such 
an  individual  case.  At  first  sight,  it  seemed  as 
though  Ibsen  had  been  influenced  by  Dumas  fils, 
which  might  have  been  true,  in  spite  of  the 
marked  dislike  which  each  expressed  for  the 
other;1  but  closer  examination  showed  that  Hedda 
Gabler  had  no  sort  of  relation  with  the  pam- 
phlets of  the  master  of  Parisian  problem-tragedy. 
The  attempt  to  show  that  Hedda  Gabler 

1  It  is  said  that  La  Route  de  Thebes,  which  Dumas  had  begun  when 
he  died,  was  to  have  been  a  deliberate  attack  on  the  methods  and 
influence  of  Ibsen.  Ibsen,  on  his  part,  loathed  Dumas. 


1883-91  i?7 

"proved"  anything  was  annoying  to  Ibsen,  who 
sa*d,  with  more  than  his  customary  firmness,  "It 
was  not  my  purpose  to  deal  with  what  people  call 
problems  in  this  play.  What  I  chiefly  tried  to 
do  was  to  paint  human  beings,  human  emotions 
and  human  fate,  against  a  background  of  some  of 
the  conditions  and  laws  of  society  as  it  exists 
to-day."  The  German  critics,  a  little  puzzled 
to  find  a  longitude  and  latitude  for  Tesman's 
"tastefully  decorated"  villa,  declared  that  this 
time  Ibsen  had  written  an  "international,"  not  a 
locally  Norwegian,  play.  Nothing  could  be  further 
from  the  truth.  On  the  contrary,  Hedda  Gabler 
is  perhaps  the  most  fatally  local  and  Norwegian 
of  all  Ibsen's  plays,  and  it  presents,  not  of  course 
the  highly-civilized  Christiania  of  to-day,  but  the 
half-suburban,  half-rural  little  straggling  town  of 
forty  years  ago.  When  I  visited  Norway  as  a 
lad,  I  received  kind  but  sometimes  rather  stiff 
and  raw  hospitality  in  several  tastefully  decorated 
villas,  which  were  as  like  that  of  the  Tesmans  as 
pea  is  like  pea.  Why  Ibsen  chose  to  paint  a 
"west  end  of  Christiania"  of  1860  rather  than  of 
1890  I  cannot  guess,  unless  it  was  that  to  so  per- 
sistent an  exile  the  former  was  far  more  familiar 
than  the  latter. 

A  Russian  actress  of  extreme  talent,  Madame 
Alia  Nazimova,  who  has  had  special  opportuni- 


178  IBSEN 

ties  of  studying  the  part  of  Hedda  Gabler,  has 
lately  (1907)  depicted  her  as  "aristocratic  and  ill- 
mated,  ambitious  and  doomed  to  a  repulsive 
alliance  with  a  man  beneath  her  station,  whom 
she  had  mistakenly  hoped  would  give  her  posi- 
tion and  wealth.  In  other  circumstances,  Hedda 
would  have  been  a  power  for  beauty  and  good." 
If  this  ingenious  theory  be  correct,  Hedda  Gabler 
must  be  considered  as  the  leading  example  of 
Ibsen's  often-repeated  demonstration,  that  evil  is 
produced  by  circumstances  and  not  by  character. 
The  portrait  becomes  thrillingly  vital  if  we  realize 
that  the  stains  upon  it  are  the  impact  of  acciden- 
tal conditions  on  a  nature  which  might  otherwise 
have  been  useful  and  fleckless.  Hedda  Gabler  is 
painted  as  Mr.  Sargent  might  paint  a  lady  of  the 
London  fashionable  world;  his  brush  would  divine 
and  emphasize,  as  Ibsen's  pen  does,  the  disorder 
of  her  nerves,  and  the  ravaging  concentration  of 
her  will  in  a  sort  of  barren  and  impotent  egotism, 
while  doing  justice  to  the  superficial  attractiveness 
of  her  cultivated  physical  beauty.  He  would  show, 
as  Ibsen  shows,  and  with  an  equal  lack  of  malice 
prepense,  various  detestable  features  which  the 
mask  of  good  manners  had  concealed.  Each  artist 
would  be  called  a  caricaturist,  because  his  instinc- 
tive penetration  had  taken  him  into  regions  where 
the  powder-puff  and  the  rouge-pot  lose  their  power. 


CHAPTER  VIII 
LAST  YEARS 

WITH  the  publication  of  Hedda  Gabler  Ibsen 
passed  into  what  we  may  call  his  final  glory. 
Almost  insensibly,  and  to  an  accompaniment  of 
his  own  growls  of  indignation,  he  had  taken  his 
place,  not  merely  as  the  most  eminent  imaginative 
writer  of  the  three  Scandinavian  countries,  but  as 
the  type  there  of  what  literature  should  be  and 
the  prophet  of  what  it  would  become.  In  1880, 
Norway,  the  youngest  and  long  the  rawest  of  the 
three  civilizations,  was  now  the  foremost  in  ac- 
tivity, and  though  the  influence  of  Bjornson  and 
Jonas  Lie  was  significant,  yet  it  was  not  to  be 
compared  for  breadth  and  complexity  with  that 
of  Ibsen.  The  nature  of  the  revolution,  exercised 
by  the  subject  of  this  memoir  between  1880  and 
1890,  that  is  to  say  from  Ghosts  to  Hedda  Gabler, 
was  destructive  before  it  was  constructive.  The 
poetry,  fiction  and  drama  of  the  three  Northern 
nations  had  become  stagnant  with  commonplace 
and  conventional  matter,  lumbered  with  the 
recognized,  inevitable  and  sacrosanct  forms  of 


180  IBSEN 

composition.  This  was  particularly  the  case  in 
Sweden,  where  the  influence  of  Ibsen  now  proved 
more  violent  and  catastrophic  than  anywhere  else. 
Ibsen  destroyed  the  attraction  of  the  old  banal 
poetry;  his  spirit  breathed  upon  it  in  fire,  and  in 
all  its  faded  elegance  it  withered  up  and  vanished. 

The  next  event  was  that  the  new  generation  in 
the  three  Northern  countries,  deprived  of  its  tra- 
ditional authorities,  looked  about  for  a  prophet 
and  a  father,  and  they  found  what  they  wanted 
in  the  exceedingly  uncompromising  elderly  gentle- 
man who  remained  so  silent  in  the  cafes  of  Rome 
and  of  Munich.  The  zeal  of  the  young  for  this 
unseen  and  unsympathetic  personage  was  ex- 
traordinary, and  took  forms  of  amazing  extrav- 
agance. Ibsen's  impassivity  merely  heightened 
the  enthusiasm  of  his  countless  admirers,  who 
were  found,  it  should  be  stated,  almost  entirely 
among  persons  who  were  born  after  his  exile  from 
Norway.  His  writings  supplied  a  challenge  to 
character  and  intelligence  which  appealed  to  those 
who  disliked  the  earlier  system  of  morals  and 
aesthetics  against  which  he  had  so  long  fought 
single-handed. 

Among  writers  in  the  North  Ibsen  began  to  hold 
very  much  the  position  that  Whistler  was  taking 
among  painters  and  etchers  in  this  country,  that 
is  to  say  the  abuse  and  ridicule  of  his  works  by  a 


LAST  YEARS  181 

dwindling  group  of  elderly  conventional  critics 
merely  stung  into  more  frenzied  laudation  an  ever- 
widening  circle  of  youthful  admirers.  Ibsen  rep- 
resented, for  a  time  almost  exclusively,  "serious" 
aims  in  literature,  and  with  those  of  Herbert 
Spencer,  and  in  less  measure  of  Zola,  and  a  little 
later  of  Nietzsche,  his  books  were  the  spiritual 
food  of  all  youthful  minds  of  any  vigor  or  elasticity. 
In  Sweden,  at  this  time,  the  admiration  for 
Ibsen  took  forms  of  almost  preposterous  violence. 
The  great  Swedish  novelist,  Gustaf  af  Geijerstam, 
has  given  a  curious  and  amusing  account  of  the 
rage  for  Ibsen  which  came  to  its  height  about 
1880.  The  question  which  every  student  asked 
his  friend,  every  lover  his  mistress,  was  "What 
do  you  think  of  Ibsen  ? "  Not  to  be  a  believer 
in  the  Norwegian  master  was  a  reef  upon  which 
love  or  friendship  might  easily  be  shipwrecked. 
It  was  quoted  gravely  as  an  insufferable  incom- 
patibility for  the  state  of  marriage.  There  was 
a  curious  and  secret  symbolism  running  through 
the  whole  of  youthful  Swedish  society,  from 
which  their  elders  were  cunningly  excluded,  by 
which  the  volumes  of  Ibsen,  passed  from  hand  to 
hand,  presented  on  solemn  occasions,  became  the 
emblems  of  the  problems  interesting  to  generous 
youth,  flags  carried  in  the  moral  fight  for  liberty 
and  truth.  The  three  Northern  countries,  in 


i8z  IBSEN 

their  long  stagnation,  had  become  clogged  and 
deadened  with  spiritual  humbug,  which  had 
sealed  the  sources  of  emotion.  It  seemed  as 
though,  after  the  long  frost  of  the  seventies, 
spring  had  come  and  literature  had  budded  at 
last,  and  that  it  was  Ibsen  who  had  blown  the 
clarion  of  the  West  Wind  and  heralded  the 
emancipation. 

The  enthusiasm  for  the  Norwegian  dramatist 
was  not  always  according  to  knowledge,  and 
sometimes  it  took  grotesque  forms.  Much  of  the 
abuse  showered  in  England  and  France  upon 
Ibsen  at  the  time  we  are  now  describing  was  due 
to  echoes  of  the  extravagance  of  his  Scandinavian 
and  German  idolaters.  A  Swedish  satirist1  said 
that  if  Ibsen  could  have  foreseen  how  many 
"misunderstood"  women  would  leave  their  homes 
in  imitation  of  Nora,  and  how  many  lovesick 
housekeepers  drink  poison  on  account  of  Rebecca, 
he  would  have  thrown  ashes  on  his  head  and 
have  retreated  into  the  deserts  of  Tartary.  The 
suicide  of  the  novelist,  Ernst  Ahlgren,  was  the 
tragic  circumstance  where  much  was  so  purely 
comic.  But  if  there  were  elements  of  tragi- 
comedy in  the  Ibsen  idolatry,  there  were  far  more 
important  elements  of  vigorous  and  wholesome 
intellectual  independence;  and  it  was  during  this 

1  "Stella  Kleve"  (Mathilda  Mailing),  in  Framat  (1886). 


LAST  YEARS  183 

period  of  Ibsen's  almost  hectic  popularity  that 
the  foundations  of  a  new  fiction  and  a  new  drama 
were  laid  in  Sweden,  Denmark  and  Norway.  A 
whole  generation  sucked  strength  and  energy 
from  his  early  writings,  since  it  is  to  be  remarked 
that,  from  1880  to  1890,  the  great  prestige  of 
Ibsen  did  not  depend  so  much  on  the  dramas  he 
was  then  producing,  as  on  the  earlier  works  of  his 
poetic  youth,  now  reread  with  an  unexampled 
fervor.  So,  with  us,  the  tardy  popularity  of 
Robert  Browning,  which  faintly  resembles  that 
of  Ibsen,  did  not  attract  the  younger  generation 
to  the  volumes  which  succeeed  The  Ring  and  the 
Book,  but  sent  them  back  to  the  books  which  their 
fathers  had  despised,  to  Pippa  Passes  and  Men 
and  Women.  To  the  generation  of  1880,  Ibsen 
was  not  so  much  the  author  of  the  realistic  social 
dramas  as  of  those  old  but  now  rediscovered 
miracles  of  poetry  and  wit,  The  Pretenders,  Brand 
and  Peer  Gynt. 

In  1889  Ibsen  had  been  made  very  pleasantly 
conscious  of  this  strong  personal  feeling  in  his 
favor  among  young  men  and  women.  Nor  did 
he  find  it  confined  to  Scandinavia.  He  had  trav- 
elled about  in  Germany,  and  everywhere  his  plays 
were  being  acted.  Berlin  was  wild  about  him; 
at  Weimar  he  was  feted  like  a  conqueror.  He 
did  not  settle  down  at  Munich  until  May,  and 


184  IBSEN 

here,  as  we  have  seen,  he  stayed  all  the  summer, 
hard  at  work.  After  the  success  of  Hedda  Gabler, 
which  overpowered  all  adverse  comment,  Ibsen 
began  to  long  to  be  in  Norway  again,  and  this 
feeling  was  combined,  in  a  curious  way,  with  a 
very  powerful  emotion  which  now  entered  into 
his  life.  He  had  lived  a  retired  and  peaceful 
existence,  mainly  a  spectator  at  the  feast,  as  little 
occupied  in  helping  himself  to  the  dishes  which 
he  saw  others  enjoy  as  is  an  eremite  in  the  des- 
ert in  plucking  the  grape-clusters  of  his  dreams. 
No  adventure,  of  any  prominent  kind,  had  ever 
been  seen  to  diversify  Ibsen's  perfectly  decorous 
and  domestic  career.  And  now  he  was  more  than 
sixty,  and  the  gray  tones  were  gathering  round  him 
more  thickly  than  ever,  when  a  real  ray  of  ver- 
milion descended  out  of  the  sky  and  filled  his 
horizon  with  color. 

In  the  season  of  1889,  among  the  summer 
boarders  at  Gossensass,  there  appeared  a  young 
Viennese  lady  of  eighteen,  Miss  Emilie  Bardach. 
She  used  to  sit  on  a  certain  bench  in  the  Pferchthal, 
and  when  the  poet,  whom  she  adored  from  afar, 
passed  by,  she  had  the  courage  to  smile  at  him. 
Strange  to  say,  her  smile  was  returned,  and  soon 
Ibsen  was  on  the  bench  at  her  side.  He  readily 
discovered  where  she  lived;  no  less  readily  he 
gained  an  introduction  to  the  family  with  whom 


LAST  YEARS  185 

she  boarded.  There  was  a  window-seat  in  the 
salle  a  manger;  it  was  deep  and  shaded  by  odorous 
flowering  shrubs;  it  lent  itself  to  endless  conver- 
sation. The  episode  was  strange,  the  passion  im- 
probable, incomprehensible,  profoundly  natural 
and  true.  Perhaps,  until  they  parted  in  the  last 
days  of  September,  neither  the  old  man  nor  the 
young  girl  realized  what  their  relations  had  meant 
to  each.  Youth  secured  its  revenge,  however; 
Miss  Bardach  soon  wrote  from  Vienna  that  she 
was  now  more  tranquil,  more  independent,  happy 
at  last.  Ibsen,  on  the  other  hand,  was  heart- 
broken, quivering  with  ecstasy,  overwhelmed  with 
joy  and  despair. 

It  was  the  enigma  in  his  "princess,"  as  he  called 
her,  that  completed  Miss  Bardach's  sorcery  over 
the  old  poet.  She  seems  to  have  been  no  co- 
quette; she  flung  her  dangerous  fascinations  at 
his  feet;  she  broke  the  thread  which  bound  the 
charms  of  her  spirit  and  poured  them  over  him. 
He,  for  his  part,  remaining  discreet  and  respect- 
ful, was  shattered  with  happiness.  To  a  friend 
of  mine,  a  young  Norwegian  man  of  letters,  Ibsen 
said  about  this  time:  "Oh,  you  can  always  love, 
but  I  am  happier  than  the  happiest,  for  I  am 
beloved."  Long  afterwards,  on  his  seventieth 
birthday,  when  his  own  natural  force  was  fail- 
ing, he  wrote  to  Miss  Bardach,  "That  summer  at 


186  IBSEN 

Gossensass  was  the  most  beautiful  and  the  most 
harmonious  portion  of  my  whole  existence.  I 
scarcely  venture  to  think  of  it,  and  yet  I  think 
of  nothing  else.  Ah!  forever!"  He  did  not 
dare  to  send  her  The  Master-Builder,  since  her 
presence  interpenetrated  every  line  of  it  like  a 
perfume,  and  when,  we  are  told,  she  sent  him 
her  photograph,  signed  "Princess  of  Orangia," 
her  too-bold  identification  of  herself  with  Hilda 
Wangel  hurt  him  as  a  rough  touch,  that  finer  tact 
would  have  avoided.  There  can  be  no  doubt  at 
all  that  while  she  was  now  largely  absorbed  by 
the  compliment  to  her  own  vanity,  he  was  still 
absolutely  enthralled  and  bewitched,  and  that  what 
was  fun  to  her  made  life  and  death  to  him. 

This  very  curious  episode,1  which  modifies  in 
several  important  respects  our  conception  of  the 
dramatist's  character,  is  analogous  with  the 
apparent  change  of  disposition  which  made 
Renan  surprise  his  unthinking  admirers  so  sud- 
denly at  the  epoch  of  L'Eau  de  Jouvence  and 
L'Abbesse  de  'Jouarre.  It  was  founded,  of  course, 
on  that  dangerous  susceptibility  to  which  an 
elderly  man  of  genius,  whose  life  had  been  spent 
in  labor  and  reflection,  may  be  inclined  to  re- 

1  It  was  quite  unknown  until  the  correspondence — which  has  not 
been  translated  into  English — was  published  by  Georg  Brandes  at 
the  desire  of  the  lady  herself  (September,  1906). 


LAST  YEARS  187 

sign  himself,  as  he  sees  the  sands  running  out  of 
the  hour-glass,  and  realizes  that  in  analyzing  and 
dissecting  emotion  he  has  never  had  time  to 
enjoy  it.  Time  is  so  short,  the  nerves  so  fragile 
and  so  finite,  the  dreadful  illusion,  the  maia,  so 
irresistible,  that  the  old  man  gives  way  to  it,  and 
would  sooner  die  at  once  than  not  make  one  grasp 
at  happiness. 

It  will  have  been  remarked  that  Ibsen's  habit 
was  to  store  up  an  impression,  but  not  to  use  it 
immediately  on  creative  work.  We  need,  there- 
fore, feel  no  surprise  that  there  is  not  a  trace  of 
the  Bardach  episode  in  Hedda  GaUer,  although 
the  composition  of  that  play  immediately  followed 
the  hohes,  schmerzliches  Gliick  at  Gossensass.  He 
was,  too,  no  moonlight  serenader,  and  his  in- 
tense emotion  is  perfectly  compatible  with  the  out- 
line of  some  of  the  gossip  which  was  repeated  at 
the  time  of  his  death;  Ibsen  being  reported  to  have 
said  of  the  Viennese  girl:  "She  did  not  get  hold  of 
me,  but  I  got  hold  of  her — for  my  play."  These 
things  are  very  complex,  and  not  to  be  hastily  dis- 
missed, especially  on  the  rough  and  ready  English 
system.  There  would  be  give  and  take  in  such 
a  complicated  situation,  when  the  object  was,  as 
Ibsen  himself  says,  out  of  reach  unversichtbar. 
There  is  no  question  that  for  every  pang  which 
Hilda  made  her  ancient  lover  suffer,  he  would  en- 


188  IBSEN 

rich  his  imagination  with  a  dozen  points  of  ex- 
perience. There  is  no  paradox  in  saying  that  the 
poet  was  overwhelmed  with  a  passion  and  yet  con- 
sciously made  it  serve  as  material  for  his  plays. 
From  this  time  onwards  every  dramatic  work  of 
his  bears  the  stamp  of  those  hours  among  the  roses 
at  Gossensass. 

To  the  spring  of  1891  belongs  Ibsen's  some- 
what momentous  visit  to  Vienna,  where  he  was 
invited  by  Dr.  Max  Burckhard,  the  director  of 
the  Burg  Theatre,  to  superintend  the  perform- 
ance of  his  Pretenders.  Ibsen  had  already,  in 
strict  privacy,  visited  Vienna,  where  his  plays 
enjoyed  an  increasing  success,  but  this  was  his 
first  public  entrance  into  a  city  which  he  admired 
on  the  whole  more  than  any  other  city  of  Europe. 
"Mein  schoner  Wien!"  he  used  to  murmur,  with 
quite  a  elan  of  affection.  In  April,  1891,  after 
the  triumph  of  his  tragedy  on  the  stage,  Ibsen 
was  the  guest  at  a  public  banquet  at  Vienna,  when 
the  ovations  were  overwhelming  and  were  ex- 
tended until  four  o'clock  next  morning.  A  per- 
formance of  The  Wild  Duck  produced,  what  was 
almost  as  dear  to  Ibsen  as  praise,  a  violent  polemic, 
and  he  passed  on  out  of  a  world  of  storm  and 
passion  to  Buda-Pesth,  where  he  saw  A  Doll's 
House  acted  in  Hungarian,  amid  thunders  of 
applause,  and  where  he  was  the  guest  of  Count 


LAST  YEARS  189 

Albert  Apponyi.  These  were  the  happy  and 
fruitful  years  which  consoled  the  heart  of  the  poet 
for  the  bitter  time  when 

"Hate's  decree 
Dwelt  in  his  thoughts  intolerable." 

In  the  ensuing  summer,  in  July,  1891,  Ibsen 
left  Munich  with  every  intention  of  returning  to 
it,  but  with  the  plan  of  a  long  summer  trip  in 
Norway,  where  the  triumphant  success  of  Hedda 
Gabler  had  been  very  agreeable  to  his  feelings. 
Once  more  he  pushed  up  through  the  country  to 
Trondhjem,  a  city  which  had  always  attracted 
him  and  pleased  him.  Here  he  presently  em- 
barked on  one  of  the  summer  coasting-steamers, 
and  saw  the  shores  of  Nordland  and  Finmark 
for  the  first  time,  visiting  the  North  Cape  itself. 
He  came  back  to  Christiania  for  the  rest  of  the 
season,  with  no  prospect  of  staying.  But  he  en- 
joyed a  most  flattering  reception;  he  was  begged 
to  resume  his  practical  citizenship,  and  he  was 
assured  that  life  in  Norway  would  be  made  very 
pleasant  to  him.  In  the  autumn,  therefore,  in 
his  abrupt  way,  he  took  an  apartment  in  Viktoria 
Terrasse,  and  sent  to  Munich  for  his  furniture. 
He  said  to  a  friend  who  expressed  surprise  at  this 
settlement:  "I  may  just  as  well  make  Christiania 
my  headquarters  as  Munich.  The  railway  takes 


IBSEN 

me  in  a  very  short  time  wherever  I  want  to  go; 
and  when  I  am  bored  with  Norway  I  can  travel 
elsewhere."  But  he  never  felt  the  fatigue  he 
anticipated,  and,  but  for  brief  visits  to  Copen- 
hagen or  Stockholm,  he  left  his  native  country 
no  more  after  1891,  although  he  changed  his 
abode  in  Christiania  itself. 

For  the  first  twelve  months  Ibsen  enjoyed  the 
pleasures  of  the  prodigal  returned,  and  fed  with 
gusto  on  the  fatted  calf.  Then,  when  three  years 
separated  him  from  the  illuminating  soul-adven- 
tures of  Gossensass,  he  began  to  turn  them  into 
a  play.  It  proved  to  be  The  Master-Builder,  and 
was  published  before  the  close  of  December, 
1892,  with  the  date  1893  on  the  title-page.  This 
play  was  running  for  some  time  in  Germany  and 
England  before  it  was  played  in  Scandinavia. 
But  on  the  evening  of  March  8,  1893,  it  was 
simultaneously  given  at  the  National  Theatre  in 
Christiania  and  at  the  Royal  Theatre  in  Copen- 
hagen. It  was  a  work  which  greatly  puzzled  the 
critics,  and  its  meaning  was  scarcely  apparent  until 
it  had  been  seen  on  the  stage,  for  which  the  oddity 
of  its  arrangements  are  singularly  well  adapted. 
It  was,  however,  almost  immediately  noticed  that 
it  marked  a  new  departure  in  Ibsen's  writings. 
Here  was  an  end  of  the  purely  realistic  and  pro- 
saic social  dramas,  which  had  reigned  from  The 


Ibsen. 

From  the  painting  by  Eilif  Petetsea. 


LAST  YEARS  191 

League  of  Youth  to  Hedda  Gabler,  and  here  was 
a  return  to  the  strange  and  haunting  beauty  of  the 
old  imaginative  pieces.  Mr.  Archer  was  happily 
inspired  when  he  spoke  of  "the  pure  melody"  of 
the  piece,  and  the  best  scenes  of  The  Master- 
Builder  were  heroically  and  almost  recklessly 
poetical. 

This  remarkable  composition  is  full  of  what,  for 
want  of  a  better  word,  we  must  call  "symbolism." 
In  the  conversations  between  Solness  and  Hilda 
much  is  introduced  which  is  really  almost  unin- 
telligible unless  we  take  it  to  be  autobiographical. 
The  Master-Builder  is  one  who  constructs,  not 
houses,  but  poems  and  plays.  It  is  the  poet  him- 
self who  gives  expression,  in  the  pathetic  and 
erratic  confessions  of  Solness,  to  his  doubts,  his 
craven  timidities,  his  selfish  secrets,  and  his  terror 
at  the  uniformity  of  his  "luck."  It  is  less  easy 
to  see  exactly  what  Ibsen  believed  himself  to 
be  presenting  to  us  in  the  enigmatical  figure  of 
Hilda,  so  attractive  and  genial,  so  exquisitely 
refreshing,  and  yet  radically  so  cruel  and  super- 
ficial. She  is  perhaps  conceived  as  a  symbol  of 
Youth,  arriving  too  late  within  the  circle  which 
Age  has  trodden  for  its  steps  to  walk  in,  and  lur- 
ing it  too  rashly,  by  the  mirage  of  happiness,  into 
paths  no  longer  within  its  physical  and  moral 
capacity.  "Hypnotism,"  Mr.  Archer  tells  us, 


192  IBSEN 

"is  the  first  and  last  word  of  the  dramatic  action"; 
perhaps  thought-transference  more  exactly  ex- 
presses the  idea,  but  I  should  not  have  stated 
even  this  quite  so  strongly.  The  ground  of  the 
dramatic  action  seems  to  me  to  be  the  balance 
of  Nemesis,  the  fatal  necessity  that  those  who 
enjoy  exceptional  advantages  in  life  shall  pay  for 
them  by  not  less  exceptional,  but  perhaps  less 
obvious,  disadvantages.  The  motto  of  the  piece 
— at  least  of  the  first  two  of  its  acts — might  be 
the  couplet  of  the  French  tragedian : — 

C'est  un  ordre  des  dieux  qui  jamais  ne  se  rompt 

De  nous  vendre  bien  cher  les  grands  biens  qu'ils  nous  font. 

Beneath  this,  which  we  may  call  the  transcen- 
dental aspect  of  the  play,  we  find  a  solid  and 
objective  study  of  the  self-made  man,  the  head- 
strong amateur,  who  has  never  submitted  to  the 
wholesome  discipline  of  professional  training,  but 
who  has  trusted  to  the  help  of  those  trolls  or 
mascots,  his  native  talent  and  his  unfailing 
"luck."  Upon  such  a  man  descends  Hilda,  the 
disorganizer,  who  pierces  the  armor  of  his  con- 
ceit by  a  direct  appeal  to  his  passions.  Solness 
has  been  the  irresistible  sorcerer,  through  his  good 
fortune,  but  he  is  not  protected  in  his  climacteric 
against  this  unexpected  attack  upon  the  senses. 
Samson  philanders  with  Delila,  and  discovers  that 


LAST  YEARS  193 

his  strength  is  shorn  from  him.  There  is  no 
doubt  that  Ibsen  intended  in  The  M aster-Builder 
a  searching  examination  of  "luck"  and  the 
tyranny  of  it,  the  terrible  effects  of  it  on  the 
Broviks  and  the  Kajas  whom  nobody  remembers, 
but  whose  bodies  lie  under  the  wheels  of  its  car. 
The  dramatic  situation  is  here  extremely  inter- 
esting; it  consists  in  the  fact  that  Solness,  who 
breaks  every  one  else,  is  broken  by  Hilda.  The 
inherent  hardness  of  youth,  which  makes  no  al- 
lowances, which  demands  its  kingdom  here  and 
now  upon  the  table,  was  never  more  powerfully 
depicted.  Solness  is  smashed  by  his  impact  with 
Hilda,  as  china  is  against  a  stone.  In  all  this  it 
would  be  a  mistake  to  see  anything  directly  auto- 
biographical, although  so  much  in  the  character 
and  position  of  Solness  may  remind  us,  legitimately 
enough,  of  Ibsen  himself,  and  his  adventures. 

The  personal  record  of  Ibsen  in  these  years  is 
almost  silent.  He  was  growing  old  and  set  in 
his  habits.  He  was  growing  rich,  too,  and  he 
surrounded  himself  with  sedentary  comforts.  His 
wealth,  it  may  here  be  said,  was  founded  entirely 
upon  the  success  of  his  works,  but  was  fostered 
by  his  extreme  adroitness  as  a  man  of  business. 
Those  who  are  so  fond  of  saying  that  any  man  of 
genius  might  have  excelled  in  some  other  capacity 
are  fully  justified  if  they  like  to  imagine  Ibsen  as 


i94  IBSEN 

the  model  financier.  He  certainly  possessed  a 
remarkable  aptitude  for  affairs,  and  we  learn 
that  his  speculations  were  at  once  daring  and 
crafty.  People  who  are  weary  of  commiserating 
the  poverty  of  poets  may  be  pleased  to  learn  that 
when  Ibsen  died  he  was  one  of  the  wealthiest 
private  citizens  of  Christiania,  and  this  was 
wholly  in  consequence  of  the  care  he  had  taken 
in  protecting  his  copyrights  and  administering 
his  receipts.  If  the  melancholy  couplet  is  correct 
which  tells  us  that 

Aux  petits  des  oiseaux  Dieu  donne  la  pature, 
Mais  sa  bonte  s'arrete  a  la  literature, 

we  must  believe,  with  Ibsen's  enemies,  that  his 
fortunes  were  not  under  the  divine  protection. 

The  actual  numbers  of  each  of  his  works  printed 
since  he  first  published  with  Hegel  in  Copen- 
hagen— a  connection  which  he  preserved  without 
a  breach  until  the  end — have  been  stated  since 
his  death.  They  contain  some  points  of  interest. 
After  1876  Hegel  ventured  on  large  editions  of 
each  new  play,  but  they  went  off  at  first  slowly. 
The  Lady  from  the  Sea  was  the  earliest  to  appear, 
at  once,  in  an  issue  of  10,000  copies,  which  was 
soon  exhausted.  So  great,  however,  had  the  public 
interest  in  Ibsen  become  in  1894  that  the  edition 
of  10,000  copies  of  Little  Eyolf  was  found  quite 


LAST  YEARS  195 

inadequate  to  meet  the  first  order,  and  it  was 
enlarged  to  15,000,.  all  of  which  were  gone  in  a 
fortnight.  This  circulation  in  so  small  a  reading 
public  as  that  of  Denmark  and  Norway  was  un- 
precedented, and  it  must  be  remembered  that 
the  simultaneous  translations  into  most  of  the 
languages  of  Europe  are  not  included. 

Little  Eyolf,  which  was  written  in  Christiania 
during  the  spring  and  summer  of  1894,  was  issued, 
according  to  Ibsen's  cometary  custom,  as  the 
second  week  of  December  rolled  round.  The 
reception  of  it  was  stormy,  even  in  Scandinavia, 
and  led  to  violent  outbursts  of  controversy. 
No  work  from  the  master's  pen  had  roused  more 
difference  of  opinion  among  the  critics  since  the 
bluster  over  Ghosts  fourteen  years  before.  Those 
who  prefer  to  absolute  success  in  the  creation  of 
a  work  of  art  the  personal  flavor  or  perfume  of 
the  artist  himself  were  predisposed  to  place 
Little  Eyolf  very  high  among  his  writings.  No- 
where is  he  more  independent  of  all  other  influ- 
ences, nowhere  more  intensely,  it  may  even  be 
said  more  distressingly,  himself.  From  many 
points  of  view  this  play  may  fairly  be  considered 
in  the  light  of  a  tour  de  force.  Ibsen — one  would 
conjecture — is  trying  to  see  to  what  extremities 
of  agile  independence  he  can  force  his  genius. 
The  word  "force"  has  escaped  me;  but  it  may 


196  IBSEN 

be  retained  as  reproducing  that  sense  of  a  diffi- 
culty not  quite  easily  or  completely  overcome 
which  Little  Eyolf  produces.  To  mention  but 
one  technical  matter;  there  are  but  four  char- 
acters, properly  speaking,  in  the  play — since 
Eyolf  himself  and  the  Rat- Wife  are  but  illustra- 
tions or  symbolic  properties — and  of  these  four, 
one  (Borgheim)  is  wholly  subsidiary.  Ibsen,  then, 
may  be  said  to  have  challenged  imitation  by  com- 
posing a  drama  of  passion  with  only  three  charac- 
ters in  it.  By  a  process  of  elimination  this  has  been 
done  by  ./Eschylus  (in  the  Agamemnon),  by  Racine 
(in  Phedre  and  Andromaque),  and  in  our  own  day 
by  Maeterlinck  (in  Pelleas  et  Melisande).  But 
Ibsen  was  accustomed  to  a  wider  field,  and  his 
experiment  seems  not  wholly  successful.  Little 
Eyolf,  at  least,  is,  from  all  points  of  view,  an 
exercise  on  the  tight-rope.  We  may  hazard  the 
conjecture  that  no  drama  gave  Ibsen  more  satis- 
faction to  write,  but  for  enjoyment  the  reader 
may  prefer  less  prodigious  agility  on  the  trapeze. 
If  we  turn  from  the  technical  virtuosity  of 
Little  Eyolf  to  its  moral  aspects,  we  find  it  a  very 
dreadful  play,  set  in  darkness  which  nothing 
illuminates  but  the  twinkling  sweetness  of  Asta. 
The  mysterious  symbol  of  the  Rat-Wife  breaks  in 
upon  the  pair  whose  love  is  turning  to  hate,  the 
man  waxing  cold  as  the  wife  grows  hot.  The 


LAST  YEARS  197 

Angel  of  God,  in  the  guise  of  an  old  beggar- 
woman,  descends  into  their  garden,  and  she  drags 
away,  by  an  invisible  chain,  "the  little  gnawing 
thing,"  the  pathetic  lame  child.  The  effect  on  the 
pair  of  Eyolf's  death  by  drowning  is  the  subject 
of  the  subsequent  acts.  In  Rita  jealousy  is  in- 
carnate, and  she  seems  the  most  vigorous,  and,  it 
must  be  added,  the  most  repulsive,  of  Ibsen's 
feminine  creations.  The  reckless  violence  of 
Rita's  energy,  indeed,  interpreted  by  a  competent 
actress — played,  for  instance,  as  it  was  in  London 
most  admirably  by  Miss  Achurch — is  almost  too 
painful  for  a  public  exhibition,  and  to  the  old 
criticism,  "nee  pueros  coram  populo  Medea  tru- 
cidet,"  if  a  pedant  chooses  to  press  it,  there 
seems  no  reply.  The  sex  question,  as  treated  in 
Little  Eyolfy  recalls  The  Kreutzer  Sonata  (1889) 
of  Tolstoi.  When,  however,  I  ventured  to  ask 
Ibsen  whether  there  was  anything  in  this,  he 
was  displeased,  and  stoutly  denied  it.  What  an 
author  denies,  however,  is  not  always  evidence. 

Nothing  further  of  general  interest  happened 
to  Ibsen  until  1896,  when  he  sat  down  to  com- 
pose another  drama,  John  Gabriel  Borkman. 
This  was  a  study  of  the  mental  adventures  of 
a  man  of  high  commercial  imagination,  who  is 
artificially  parted  from  all  that  contact  with  real 
affairs  which  keeps  such  energy  on  the  track,  and 


198  IBSEN 

who  goes  mad  with  dreams  of  incalculable  power, 
a  study,  in  fact,  of  financial  megalomania.  It  was 
said,  at  the  time,  that  Ibsen  was  originally  led  to 
make  this  analysis  of  character  from  reading  in 
the  Christiania  newspapers  a  report  of  the  failure 
and  trial  of  a  notorious  speculator  convicted  of 
fraud  in  1895,  and  sentenced  to  a  long  period  of 
penal  servitude. 

Whether  this  be  so  or  not,  we  have  in  the 
person  of  John  Gabriel  Borkman  a  prominent 
example  of  the  ninteenth-century  type  of  criminous 
speculator,  in  whom  the  vastness  of  view  and 
the  splendidly  altruistic  audacity  present  them- 
selves as  elements  which  render  it  exceedingly 
difficult  to  say  how  far  the  malefactor  is  morally 
responsible  for  his  crime.  He  has  imagined,  and 
to  a  certain  point  has  carried  out,  a  monster  metal 
"trust,"  for  the  success  of  which  he  lacks  neither 
courage  nor  knowledge  nor  practical  administrative 
capacity,  but  only  that  trifling  concomitant,  suf- 
ficiency of  capital.  To  keep  the  fires  blazing  until 
his  vast  model  is  molten  into  the  mould,  he  helps 
himself  to  money  here,  there,  and  everywhere, 
scarcely  giving  a  thought  to  his  responsibilities, 
so  certain  is  he  of  ultimate  and  beneficent  triumph. 
He  will  make  rich  beyond  the  dreams  of  avarice 
all  these  his  involuntary  supporters.  Unhappily, 
just  before  his  scheme  is  ready  and  the  metal  runs, 


LAST  YEARS  199 

he  is  stopped  by  the  stupidity  of  the  law,  and  finds 
himself  in  prison. 

Side  by  side  with  this  study  of  commercial 
madness  runs  a  thread  of  that  new  sense  of  the 
preciousness  of  vital  joy  which  had  occupied 
Ibsen  so  much  ever  since  the  last  of  the  summers 
at  Gossensass.  The  figure  of  Erhart  Borkman 
is  a  very  interesting  one  to  the  theatrical  student. 
In  the  ruin  of  the  family,  all  hopes  concentre  in 
him.  Every  one  claims  him,  and  in  the  bosoms 
of  each  of  his  shattered  parents  a  secret  hope  is 
born,  Mrs.  Borkman  believing  that  by  a  bril- 
liant career  of  commercial  rectitude  her  son  will 
wipe  out  the  memory  of  his  father's  crime;  Bork- 
man, who  has  never  given  up  the  ambition  of  re- 
turning to  business,  reposing  his  own  hopes  on 
the  co-operation  of  his  son. 

But  Erhart  Borkman  disappoints  them  all. 
He  will  be  himself,  he  will  enjoy  his  life,  he  will 
throw  off  all  the  burdens  both  of  responsibility 
and  of  restitution.  He  has  no  ambition  and  little 
natural  feeling;  he  simply  must  be  happy,  and 
he  suddenly  elopes,  leaving  all  their  anticipations 
bankrupt,  with  a  certain  joyous  Mrs.  Wilton,  who 
has  nothing  but  her  beauty  to  recommend  her. 
Deserted  thus  by  the  ignis  fatuus  of  youth,  the 
collapse  of  the  three  old  people  is  complete. 
Under  the  shock  the  brain  of  Borkman  gives  way, 


200  IBSEN 

and  he  wanders  out  into  the  winter's  night,  full 
of  vague  dreams  of  what  he  can  still  do  in  the 
world,  if  he  can  only  break  from  his  bondage  and 
shatter  his  dream.  He  dies  there  in  the  snow,  and 
the  two  old  sisters,  who  have  followed  him  in  an 
anxiety  which  overcomes  their  mutual  hatred, 
arrive  in  time  to  see  him  pass  away.  We  leave 
them  in  the  wood,  "a  dead  man  and  two  shadows" 
— so  Ella  Rentheim  puts  it — "for  that  is  what  the 
cold  has  made  of  us";  the  central  moral  of  the 
piece  being  that  all  the  errors  of  humanity  spring 
from  cold-heartedness  and  neglect  of  the  natural 
heat  of  love.  That  Borkman  embezzled  money, 
and  reduced  hundreds  of  innocent  people  to  beg- 
gary, might  be  condoned;  but  there  is  no  pardon 
for  his  cruel  bargaining  for  wealth  with  the  soul 
of  Ella  Rentheim,  since  that  is  the  unpardonable 
sin  against  the  Holy  Spirit.  There  are  points  of 
obscurity,  and  one  or  two  of  positive  and  even 
regrettable  whimsicality,  about  John  Gabriel  Bork- 
man, but  on  the  whole  it  is  a  work  of  lofty  orig- 
inality and  of  poignant  human  interest. 

The  veteran  was  now  beginning  to  be  con- 
scious of  the  approaches  of  old  age,  but  they 
were  made  agreeable  to  him  by  many  tokens  of 
national  homage. 

On  his  seventieth  birthday,  March  20,  1898, 
Ibsen  received  the  felicitations  of  the  world.  It 


LAST  YEARS  201 

is  pleasing  to  relate  that  a  group  of  admirers 
in  England,  a  group  which  included  Mr.  Asquith, 
Mr.  J.  M.  Barrie,  Mr.  Thomas  Hardy,  Mr.  Henry 
Arthur  Jones,  Mr.  Pinero  and  Mr.  Bernard  Shaw 
took  part  in  these  congratulations  and  sent  Ibsen 
a  handsome  set  of  silver  plate,  this  being  an  act 
which,  it  had  been  discovered,  he  particularly 
appreciated.  The  bearer  of  this  gift  was  the 
earliest  of  the  long  stream  of  visitors  to  arrive  on 
the  morning  of  the  poet's  birthday,  and  he  found 
Ibsen  in  company  with  his  wife,  his  son,  his  son's 
wife  (Bjornson's  daughter),  and  his  little  grandson, 
Tankred.  The  poet's  surprise  and  pleasure  were 
emphatic.  A  deputation  from  the  Storthing, 
headed  by  the  Leader  of  the  House,  deputations 
representing  the  University,  the  various  Christiania 
Theatres,  and  other  official  or  academic  bodies 
arrived  at  intervals  during  the  course  of  the  day; 
and  all  the  afternoon  Ibsen  was  occupied  in  taking 
these  hundreds  of  visitors,  in  parties,  up  to  the  case 
containing  the  English  tribute,  in  showing  the  ob- 
jects and  in  explaining  their  origin.  There  could 
be  no  question  that  the  gift  gave  genuine  pleasure 
to  the  recipient;  it  was  the  first,  as  it  was  to  be  the 
last,  occasion  on  which  any  public  testimony  to 
English  appreciation  of  his  genius  found  its  way 
to  Ibsen's  door. 

Immediately  after  the  birthday  festivities,  which 


202  IBSEN 

it  was  observed  had  fatigued  him,  Ibsen  started 
on  a  visit  to  Copenhagen,  where  he  was  received 
by  the  aged  King  of  Denmark,  and  to  Stockholm, 
where  he  was  overpowered  with  ovations  from  all 
classes.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  this  trium- 
phal progress,  though  deeply  grateful  to  the  aged 
poet's  susceptibilities,  made  a  heavy  drain  upon  his 
nervous  resources.  When  he  returned  to  Norway, 
indeed,  he  was  concealed  from  all  visitors  at  his 
physician's  orders,  and  it  is  understood  that  he  had 
some  kind  of  seizure.  It  was  whispered  that  he 
would  write  no  more,  and  the  biennial  drama,  due 
in  December,  1898,  did  not  make  its  appearance. 
His  stores  of  health,  however,  were  not  easily  ex- 
hausted; he  rested  for  several  months,  and  then  he 
was  seen  once  more  in  Carl  Johans  Gade,  smiling 
in  his  usual  way,  and  entirely  recovered.  It  was 
announced  that  winter  that  he  was  writing  his 
reminiscences,  but  nothing  more  was  heard  of 
any  such  book. 

He  was  able  to  take  a  vivid  interest  in  the 
preparations  for  the  National  Norwegian  Theatre 
in  Christiania,  which  was  finally  opened  by  the 
King  of  Sweden  and  Norway  on  September  I, 
1899.  Early  in  the  morning,  colossal  bronze 
statues  of  Ibsen  and  Bjornson  were  unveiled  in 
front  of  the  theatre,  and  the  poets,  now,  unfortu- 
nately, again  not  on  the  best  of  terms,  were  seen 


LAST  YEARS  203 

making  vast  detours  for  the  purpose  of  satisfying 
their  curiosity,  and  yet  not  meeting  one  another 
in  flesh  or  in  metal.  The  first  night,  to  prevent 
rivalry,  was  devoted  to  antiquarianism,  and  to 
the  performance  of  extracts  from  the  plays  of 
Holberg.  Ibsen  and  Bjornson  occupied  the  centre 
of  the  dress  circle,  sitting  uplifted  in  two  gilded 
fauteuils  and  segregated  by  a  vast  garland  of  red 
and  white  roses.  They  were  the  objects  of  uni- 
versal attention,  and  the  King  seemed  never  to 
have  done  smiling  and  bowing  to  the  two  most 
famous  of  his  Norwegian  subjects. 

The  next  night  was  Ibsen's  fete,  and  he  occu- 
pied, alone,  the  manager's  box.  A  poem  in  his 
honor,  by  Niels  Collett  Vogt,  was  recited  by 
the  leading  actor,  who  retired,  and  then  rushed 
down  the  empty  stage,  with  his  arms  extended, 
shouting  "Long  live  Henrik  Ibsen."  The  im- 
mense audience  started  to  its  feet  and  repeated 
the  words  over  and  over  again  with  deafening 
fervor.  The  poet  appeared  to  be  almost  over- 
whelmed with  emotion  and  pleasure;  at  length, 
with  a  gesture  which  was  quite  pathetic,  smiling 
through  his  tears,  he  seemed  to  beg  his  friends 
to  spare  him,  and  the  plaudits  slowly  ceased. 
An  Enemy  of  the  People  was  then  admirably 
performed.  At  the  close  of  every  act  Ibsen  was 
called  to  the  front  of  his  box,  and  when  the 


204  IBSEN 

performance  was  over,  and  the  actors  had  been 
thanked,  the  audience  turned  to  him  again  with 
a  sort  of  affectionate  ferocity.  Ibsen  was  found 
to  have  stolen  from  his  box,  but  he  was  waylaid 
and  forcibly  carried  back  to  it.  On  his  reappear- 
ance, the  whole  theatre  rose  in  a  roar  of  welcome, 
and  it  was  with  difficulty  that  the  aged  poet,  now 
painfully  exhausted  from  the  strain  of  an  evening 
of  such  prolonged  excitement,  could  persuade 
the  public  to  allow  him  to  withdraw.  At  length 
he  left  the  theatre,  walking  slowly,  bowing  and 
smiling,  down  a  lane  cleared  for  him,  far  into  the 
street,  through  the  dense  crowd  of  his  admirers. 
This  astonishing  night,  September  2,  1899,  was 
the  climax  of  Ibsen's  career. 

During  all  this  time  Ibsen  was  secretly  at  work 
on  another  drama,  which  he  intended  as  the  epi- 
logue to  his  earlier  dramatic  work,  or  at  least  to 
all  that  he  had  written  since  The  Pillars  of  Society. 
This  play,  which  was  his  latest,  appeared,  under 
the  title  of  When  We  Dead  Awaken,  in  December, 
1899  (with  1900  on  the  title-page).  It  was  simul- 
taneously published,  in  very  large  editions,  in  all  the 
principal  languages  of  Europe,  and  it  was  acted 
also,  but  it  is  impossible  to  deny  that,  whether  in  the 
study  or  on  the  boards,  it  proved  a  disappoint- 
ment. It  displayed,  especially  in  its  later  acts,  many 
obvious  signs  of  the  weakness  incident  on  old  age. 


LAST  YEARS  205 

When  it  is  said  that  When  We  Dead  Awaken 
was  not  worthy  of  its  predecessors,  it  should  be 
explained  that  no  falling  off  was  visible  in  the 
technical  cleverness  with  which  the  dialogue 
was  built  up,  nor  in  the  wording  of  particular 
sentences.  Nothing  more  natural  or  amusing, 
nothing  showing  greater  command  of  the  re- 
sources of  the  theatre,  had  ever  been  published 
by  Ibsen  himself  than  the  opening  act  of  When 
We  Dead  Awaken.  But  there  was  certainly  in 
the  whole  conception  a  cloudiness,  an  ineffectu- 
ality,  which  was  very  little  like  anything  that 
Ibsen  had  displayed  before.  The  moral  of  the 
piece  was  vague,  the  evolution  of  it  incoherent, 
and  indeed  in  many  places  it  seemed  a  parody 
of  his  earlier  manner.  Not  Mr.  Anstey  Guthrie's 
inimitable  scenes  in  Mr.  Punch's  Ibsen  were  more 
preposterous  than  almost  all  the  appearances  of 
Irene  after  the  first  act  of  When  We  Dead  Awaken. 

It  is  Irene  who  describes  herself  as  dead,  but 
awakening  in  the  society  of  Rubek,  whilst  Maia, 
the  little  gay  soulless  creature  whom  the  great 
sculptor  has  married,  and  has  got  heartily  tired 
of,  goes  up  to  the  mountains  with  Ulpheim  the 
hunter,  in  pursuit  of  the  free  joy  of  life.  At  the 
close,  the  assorted  couples  are  caught  on  the  sum- 
mit of  an  exceeding  high  mountain  by  a  snow- 
storm, which  opens  to  show  Rubek  and  Irene 


206  IBSEN 

"whirled  along  with  the  masses  of  snow  and 
buried  in  them,"  while  Maia  and  her  bear-hunter 
escape  in  safety  to  the  plains.  Interminable,  and 
often  very  sage  and  penetrating,  but  always  es- 
sentially rather  maniacal,  conversation  fills  up  the 
texture  of  the  play,  which  is  certainly  the  least 
successful  of  Ibsen's  mature  compositions.  The 
boredom  of  Rubek  in  the  midst  of  his  eminence 
and  wealth,  and  his  conviction  that  by  working 
in  such  concentration  for  the  purity  of  art  he 
merely  wasted  his  physical  life,  inspire  the  por- 
tions of  the  play  which  bring  most  conviction  and 
can  be  read  with  fullest  satisfaction.  It  is  ob- 
vious that  such  thoughts,  such  faint  and  unavail- 
ing regrets,  pursued  the  old  age  of  Ibsen;  and  the 
profound  wound  that  his  heart  had  received  so 
long  before  at  Gossensass  was  unhealed  to  his 
last  moments  of  consciousness.  An  excellent 
French  critic,  M.  P.  G.  La  Chesnais,  has  ingen- 
iously considered  the  finale  of  this  play  as  a  con- 
fession that  Ibsen,  at  this  end  of  his  career,  was 
convinced  of  the  error  of  his  earlier  rigor,  and, 
having  ceased  to  believe  in  his  mission,  regret- 
ted the  complete  sacrifice  of  his  life  to  his  work. 
But  perhaps  it  is  not  necessary  to  go  into  such 
subtleties.  When  We  Dead  Awaken  is  the  produc- 
tion of  a  very  tired  old  man,  whose  physical  pow- 
ers were  declining. 


LAST  YEARS  207 

In  the  year  1900,  during  our  South  African 
War,  sentiment  in  the  Scandinavian  countries 
was  very  generally  ranged  on  the  side  of  the 
Boers.  Ibsen,  however,  expressed  himself  strongly 
and  publicly  in  favor  of  the  English  position. 
In  an  interview  (November  24,  1900),  which 
produced  a  considerable  sensation,  he  remarked 
that  the  Boers  were  but  half-cultivated,  and  had 
neither  the  will  nor  the  power  to  advance  the 
cause  of  civilization.  Their  sole  object  had  come 
to  be  a  jealous  exclusion  of  all  the  higher  forms  of 
culture.  The  English  were  merely  taking  what 
the  Boers  themselves  had  stolen  from  an  earlier 
race;  the  Boers  had  pitilessly  hunted  their  pre- 
cursors out  of  house  and  home,  and  now  they 
were  tasting  the  same  cup  themselves.  These  were 
considerations  which  had  not  occurred  to  gener- 
ous sentimentalists  in  Norway,  and  Ibsen's  de- 
fence of  England,  which  he  supported  in  further 
communications  with  irony  and  courage,  made  a 
great  sensation,  and  threw  cold  water  on  the  pro- 
Boer  sentimentalists.  In  Holland,  where  Ibsen 
had  a  wide  public,  this  want  of  sympathy  for  Dutch 
prejudice  raised  a  good  deal  of  resentment,  and 
Ibsen's  statements  were  replied  to  by  the  fiery 
young  journalist,  Cornelius  Karel  Elout,  who  even 
published  a  book  on  the  subject.  Ibsen  took 
dignified  notice  of  Elout's  attacks  (December  9, 


2o8  IBSEN 

1900),  repeating  his  defence  of  English  policy, 
and  this  was  the  latest  of  his  public  appearances. 

He  took  an  interest,  however,  in  the  preparation 
of  the  great  edition  of  his  Collected  Works,  which 
appeared  in  Copenhagen  in  1901  and  1902,  in 
ten  volumes.  Before  the  publication  of  the  latest 
of  these,  however,  Ibsen  had  suffered  from  an 
apoplectic  stroke,  from  which  he  never  wholly 
recovered.  It  was  believed  that  any  form  of 
mental  fatigue  might  now  be  fatal  to  him,  and  his 
life  was  prolonged  by  extreme  medical  care.  He 
was  contented  in  spirit  and  even  cheerful,  but 
from  this  time  forth  he  was  more  and  more  com- 
pletely withdrawn  from  consecutive  interest  in 
what  was  going  on  in  the  world  without.  The 
publication,  in  succession,  of  his  juvenile  works 
(K&mpehojeriy  Olaf  Liljekrans,  both  edited  by 
Halvdan  Koht,  in  1902),  of  his  Correspondence) 
edited  by  Koht  and  Julius  Elias,  in  1904,  of  the 
bibliographical  edition  of  his  collected  works  by 
Carl  Naerup,  in  1902,  left  him  indifferent  and 
scarcely  conscious.  The  gathering  darkness  was 
broken,  it  is  said,  by  a  gleam  of  light  in  1905; 
when  the  freedom  of  Norway  and  the  accession 
of  King  Hakon  were  explained  to  him,  he  was 
able  to  express  his  joyful  approval  before  the 
cloud  finally  sank  upon  his  intelligence. 

During  his  long  illness  Ibsen  was  troubled  by 


LAST  YEARS  209 

aphasia,  and  he  expressed  himself  painfully,  now 
in  broken  Norwegian,  now  in  still  more  broken 
German.  His  unhappy  hero,  Oswald  Alving,  in 
Ghosts,  had  thrilled  the  world  by  his  cry,  "Give 
me  the  sun,  Mother!"  and  now  Ibsen,  with  glassy 
eyes,  gazed  at  the  dim  windows,  murmuring 
"Keine  Sonne,  keine  Sonne,  keine  Sonne!"  At 
the  table  where  all  the  works  of  his  maturity  had 
been  written  the  old  man  sat,  persistently  learn- 
ing and  forgetting  the  alphabet.  "Look!"  he 
said  to  Julius  Elias,  pointing  to  his  mournful 
pot-hooks,  "See  what  I  am  doing!  I  am  sitting 
here  and  learning  my  letters — my  letters!  I  who 
was  once  a  Writer!"  Over  this  shattered  image 
of  what  Ibsen  had  been,  over  this  dying  lion,  who 
could  not  die,  Mrs.  Ibsen  watched  with  the  de- 
votion of  wife,  mother  and  nurse  in  one,  through 
six  pathetic  years.  She  was  rewarded,  in  his 
happier  moments,  by  the  affection  and  tender 
gratitude  of  her  invalid,  whose  latest  articulate 
words  were  addressed  to  her — " min  sode,  k]<zrey 
snille  frue"  (my  sweet,  dear,  good  wife);  and 
she  taught  to  adore  their  grandfather  the  three 
children  of  a  new  generation,  Tankred,  Irene, 
Eleonora. 

Ibsen  preserved  the  habit  of  walking  about  his 
room,  or  standing  for  hours  staring  out  of  window, 
until  the  beginning  of  May,  1906.  Then  a  more 


210  IBSEN 

complete  decay  confined  him  to  his  bed.  After 
several  days  of  unconsciousness,  he  died  very 
peacefully  in  his  house  on  Drammensvej,  opposite 
the  Royal  Gardens  of  Christiania,  at  half-past  two 
in  the  afternoon  of  May  23,  1906,  being  in  his 
seventy-ninth  year.  By  a  unanimous  vote  of  the 
Storthing  he  was  awarded  a  public  funeral,  which 
the  King  of  Norway  attended  in  person,  while 
King  Edward  VII  was  represented  there  by  the 
British  Minister.  The  event  was  regarded  through- 
out Norway  as  a  national  ceremony  of  the  highest 
solemnity  and  importance,  and  the  poet  who  had 
suffered  such  bitter  humiliation  and  neglect  in  his 
youth  was  carried  to  his  grave  in  solemn  splendor, 
to  the  sound  of  a  people's  lamentation. 


CHAPTER  IX 
PERSONAL  CHARACTERISTICS 

DURING  the  latest  years  of  his  life,  which  were 
spent  as  a  wealthy  and  prosperous  citizen  of 
Christiania,  the  figure  of  Ibsen  took  forms  of 
legendary  celebrity  which  were  equalled  by  no 
other  living  man  of  letters,  not  even  by  Tol- 
stoi, and  which  had  scarcely  been  surpassed, 
among  the  dead,  by  Victor  Hugo.  When  we 
think  of  the  obscurity  of  his  youth  and  middle 
age,  and  of  his  consistent  refusal  to  advertise 
himself  by  any  of  the  little  vulgar  arts  of  self- 
exhibition,  this  extreme  publicity  is  at  first  sight 
curious,  but  it  can  be  explained.  Norway  is  a 
small  and  a  new  country,  inordinately,  perhaps, 
but  justly  and  gracefully  proud  of  those — an  Ole 
Bull,  a  Frithjof  Nansen,  an  Edvard  Grieg — who 
spread  through  the  world  evidences  of  its  spiritual 
life.  But  the  one  who  was  more  original,  more 
powerful,  more  interesting  than  any  other  of  her 
sons,  had  persistently  kept  aloof  from  the  soil  of 
Norway,  and  was  at  length  recaptured  and  shut 
up  in  a  golden  cage  with  more  expenditure  of 


212  IBSEN 

delicate  labor  than  any  perverse  canary  or  es- 
caped macaw  had  ever  needed.  Ibsen  safely 
housed  in  Christiania! — it  was  the  recovery  of  an 
important  national  asset,  the  resumption,  after 
years  of  vexation  and  loss,  of  the  intellectual  re- 
galia of  Norway. 

Ibsen,  then — recaptured,  though  still  in  a  frame 
of  mind  which  left  the  captors  nervous — was 
naturally  an  object  of  pride.  For  the  benefit 
of  the  hundreds  of  tourists  who  annually  pass 
through  Christiania,  it  was  more  than  tempting, 
it  was  irresistible  to  point  out,  in  slow  advance 
along  Carl  Johans  Gade,  in  permanent  silence  at  a 
table  in  the  Grand  Cafe,  "our  greatest  citizen." 
To  this  species  of  demonstration  Ibsen  uncon- 
sciously lent  himself  by  his  immobility,  his  regu- 
larity of  habits,  his  solemn  taciturnity.  He  had 
become  more  like  a  strange  physical  object  than 
like  a  man  among  men.  He  was  visible  broadly 
and  quietly,  not  conversing,  rarely  moving,  quite 
isolated  and  self-contained,  a  recognized  public 
spectacle,  delivered  up,  as  though  bound  hand 
and  foot,  to  the  kodak-hunter  and  the  maker  of 
"spicy"  paragraphs.  That  Ibsen  was  never  seen 
to  do  anything,  or  heard  to  say  anything,  that 
those  who  boasted  of  being  intimate  with  him 
obviously  lied  in  their  teeth — all  this  prepared 
him  for  sacrifice.  Christiania  is  a  hot-bed  of  gossip, 


PERSONAL  CHARACTERISTICS    213 

and  its  press  one  of  the  most  "chatty"  in  the 
world.  Our  "greatest  living  author"  was  offered 
up  as  a  wave-offering,  and  he  smoked  daily  on  the 
altar  of  the  newspapers. 

It  will  be  extremely  rash  of  the  biographers 
of  the  future  to  try  to  follow  Ibsen's  life  day  by 
day  in  the  Christiania  press  from,  let  us  say, 
1891  to  1901.  During  that  decade  he  occupied 
the  reporters  immensely,  and  he  was  particularly 
useful  to  the  active  young  men  who  telegraph 
"chat"  to  Copenhagen,  Stockholm,  Gothen- 
burg, and  Berlin.  Snapshots  of  Ibsen,  dangerous 
illness  of  the  playwright,  quaint  habits  of  the 
Norwegian  dramatist,  a  poet's  double  life,  anec- 
dotes of  Ibsen  and  Mrs.  ,  rumors  of  the 

King's  attitude  to  Ibsen — this  pollenta,  dressed 
a  dozen  ways,  was  the  standing  dish  at  every 
journalist's  table.  If  a  space  needed  filling,  a 
very  rude  reply  to  some  fatuous  question  might 
be  fitted  in  and  called  "Instance  of  Ibsen's  Wit." 
The  crop  of  fable  was  enormous,  and  always 
seemed  to  find  a  gratified  public,  for  whom  noth- 
ing was  too  absurd  if  it  was  supposed  to  illustrate 
"our  great  national  poet."  Ibsen,  meanwhile,  did 
nothing  at  all.  He  never  refuted  a  calumny,  never 
corrected  a  story,  but  he  threw  an  ironic  glance 
through  his  gold-rimmed  spectacles  as  he  strolled 
down  Carl  Johan  with  his  hands  behind  his  back. 


214  IBSEN 

His  personal  appearance,  it  must  be  admitted, 
formed  a  tempting  basis  upon  which  to  build  a 
legend.  His  force  of  will  had  gradually  trans- 
figured his  bodily  forms  until  he  thoroughly  looked 
the  part  which  he  was  expected  to  fill.  At  the 
age  of  thirty,  to  judge  by  the  early  photographs, 
he  had  been  a  commonplace-looking  little  man, 
with  a  shock  of  coal-black  hair  and  a  full  beard, 
one  of  those  hirsute  types  common  in  the  Teutonic 
races,  which  may  prove,  on  inquiry,  to  be  painter, 
musician,  or  engraver,  or  possibly  engineer,  but 
less  probably  poet.  Then  came  the  exile  from 
Norway,  and  the  residence  in  Rome,  marked  by 
a  little  bust  which  stands  before  me  now,  where 
the  beard  is  cut  away  into  two  round  whiskers  so 
as  to  release  the  firm  round  chin,  and  the  long  upper 
lip  is  clean-shaved.  Here  there  is  more  liveliness, 
but  still  no  distinction.  Then  comes  a  further 
advance — a  photograph  (in  which  I  feel  a  tender 
pride,  for  it  was  made  to  please  me)  taken  in 
Dresden  (October  15,  1873),  where  the  brow, 
perfectly  smooth  and  white,  has  widened  out,  the 
whiskers  have  become  less  chubby,  and  the  small, 
scrutinizing  eyes  absolutely  sparkle  with  malice. 
Here,  you  say  at  last,  is  no  poet,  indeed,  but  an 
unusually  cultivated  banker  or  surprisingly  adroit 
solicitor.  Here  the  hair,  retreating  from  the  greit 
forehead,  begins  to  curl  and  roll  with  a  distin- 


Bust  of  Ibsen,   about  1865. 


PERSONAL  CHARACTERISTICS    215 

guished  wildness;  here  the  long  mouth,  like  a  slit 
in  the  face,  losing  itself  at  each  end  in  whisker,  is 
a  symbol  of  concentrated  will  power,  a  drawer  in 
some  bureau,  containing  treasures,  firmly  locked 

up- 
Then   came   Munich,  where  Ibsen's   character 

underwent  very  considerable  changes,  or  rather 
where  its  natural  features  became  fixed  and 
emphasized.  We  are  not  left  without  precious 
indication  of  his  gestures  and  his  looks  at  this  time, 
when  he  was  a  little  past  the  age  of  fifty.  Where 
so  much  has  been  extravagantly  written,  or  de- 
scribed in  a  journalistic  key  of  false  emphasis, 
great  is  the  value  of  a  quiet  portrait  by  one  of 
those  who  has  studied  Ibsen  most  intelligently. 
It  is  perhaps  the  most  careful  pen-sketch  of  him 
in  any  language. 

Mr.  William  Archer,  then,  has  given  the  follow- 
ing account  of  his  first  meeting  with  Ibsen.  It 
was  in  the  Scandinavia  Club,  in  Rome,  at  the 
close  of  1881:— 

I  had  been  about  a  quarter  of  an  hour  in  the  room,  and  was 
standing  close  to  the  door,  when  it  opened,  and  in  glided  an 
undersized  man  with  very  broad  shoulders  and  a  large, 
leonine  head,  wearing  a  long  black  frock-coat  with  very 
broad  lapels,  on  one  of  which  a  knot  of  red  ribbon  was  con- 
spicuous. I  knew  him  at  once,  but  was  a  little  taken  aback 
by  his  low  stature.  In  spite  of  all  the  famous  instances  to 


2i6  IBSEN 

the  contrary,  one  instinctively  associates  greatness  with  size. 
His  natural  height  was  even  somewhat  diminished  by  a 
habit  of  bending  forward  slightly  from  the  waist,  begotten, 
no  doubt,  of  short-sightedness,  and  the  need  to  peer  into 
things.  He  moved  very  slowly  and  noiselessly,  with  his 
hands  behind  his  back — an  unobtrusive  personality,  which 
would  have  been  insignificant  had  the  head  been  strictly 
proportionate  to  the  rest  of  the  frame.  But  there  was  noth- 
ing insignificant  about  the  high  and  massive  forehead, 
crowned  with  a  mane  of  (then)  iron-gray  hair,  the  small  and 
pale  but  piercing  eyes  behind  the  gold-rimmed  spectacles, 
or  the  thin-lipped  mouth,  depressed  at  the  corners  into  a 
curve  indicative  of  iron  will,  and  set  between  bushy  whiskers 
of  the  same  dark  gray  as  the  hair.  The  most  cursory  ob- 
server could  not  but  recognize  power  and  character  in  the 
head;  yet  one  would  scarcely  have  guessed  it  to  be  the  power 
of  a  poet,  the  character  of  a  prophet.  Misled,  perhaps,  by 
the  ribbon  at  the  buttonhole,  and  by  an  expression  of  reserve, 
almost  of  secretiveness,  in  the  lines  of  the  tight-shut  mouth, 
one  would  rather  have  supposed  one's  self  face  to  face  with 
an  eminent  statesman  or  diplomatist. 

With  the  further  advance  of  years  all  that  was 
singular  in  Ibsen's  appearance  became  accent- 
uated. The  hair  and  beard  turned  snowy  white; 
the  former  rose  in  a  fierce  sort  of  Oberland,  the 
latter  was  kept  square  and  full,  crossing  under- 
neath the  truculent  chin  that  escaped  from  it. 
As  Ibsen  walked  to  a  banquet  in  Christiania,  he 
looked  quite  small  under  the  blaze  of  crosses, 
stars  and  belts  which  he  displayed  when  he  un- 


PERSONAL  CHARACTERISTICS    217 

buttoned  the  long  black  overcoat  which  enclosed 
him  tightly.  Never  was  he  seen  without  his  hands 
behind  him,  and  the  poet  Holger  Drachmann 
started  a  theory  that  as  Ibsen  could  do  nothing 
in  the  world  but  write,  the  Muse  tied  his  wrists 
together  at  the  small  of  his  back  whenever  they 
were  not  actually  engaged  in  composition.  His 
regularity  in  all  habits,  his  mechanical  ways,  were 
the  subject  of  much  amusement.  He  must  sit 
day  after  day  in  the  same  chair,  at  the  same  table, 
in  the  same  corner  of  the  cafe,  and  woe  to  the 
ignorant  intruder  who  was  accidentally  before- 
hand with  him.  No  word  was  spoken,  but  the 
indignant  poet  stood  at  a  distance,  glaring,  until 
the  stranger  should  be  pierced  with  embarrass- 
ment, and  should  rise  and  flee  away. 

Ibsen  had  the  reputation  of  being  dangerous 
and  difficult  of  access.  But  the  evidence  of  those 
who  knew  him  best  point  to  his  having  been 
phlegmatic  rather  than  morose.  He  was  "um- 
brageous," ready  to  be  discomposed  by  the  action 
of  others,  but,  if  not  vexed  or  startled,  he  was 
elaborately  courteous.  He  had  a  great  dislike 
of  any  abrupt  movement,  and  if  he  was  startled, 
he  had  the  instinct  of  a  wild  animal,  to  bite. 
It  was  a  pain  to  him  to  have  the  chain  of  his 
thoughts  suddenly  broken,  and  he  could  not 
bear  to  be  addressed  by  chance  acquaintances 


2i8  IBSEN 

in  street  or  cafe.  When  he  was  resident  in 
Munich  and  Dresden,  the  difficulty  of  obtaining 
an  interview  with  Ibsen  was  notorious.  His 
wife  protected  him  from  strangers,  and  if  her 
defences  broke  down,  and  the  stranger  contrived 
to  penetrate  the  inner  fastness,  Ibsen  might 
suddenly  appear  in  the  doorway,  half  in  a  rage, 
half  quivering  with  distress,  and  say,  in  heart- 
rending tones,  "Bitte  um  Arbeitsruhe" — "Please 
let  me  work  in  peace!"  They  used  to  tell  how 
in  Munich  a  rich  baron,  who  was  the  local  Maecenas 
of  letters,  once  bored  Ibsen  with  a  long  recital  of 
his  love  affairs,  and  ended  by  saying,  with  a  won- 
derful air  of  fatuity,  "To  you,  Master,  I  come, 
because  of  your  unparalleled  knowledge  of  the 
female  heart.  In  your  hands  I  place  my  fate. 
Advise  me,  and  I  will  follow  your  advice."  Ibsen 
snapped  his  mouth  and  glared  through  his  spec- 
tacles; then  in  a  low  voice  of  concentrated  fury  he 
said:  "Get  home,  and — go  to  bed!"  whereat  his 
noble  visitor  withdrew,  clothed  with  indignation 
as  with  a  garment. 

His  voice  was  uniform,  soft  and  quiet.  The 
bitter  things  he  said  seemed  the  bitterer  for  his 
gentle  way  of  saying  them.  As  his  shape  grew 
burly  and  his  head  of  hair  enormous,  the  smallness 
of  his  extremities  became  accentuated.  His  little 
hands  were  always  folded  away  as  he  tripped 


PERSONAL  CHARACTERISTICS    219 

upon  his  tiny  feet.  His  movements  were  slow 
and  distrait.  He  wasted  few  words  on  the  cur- 
rent incidents  of  life,  and  I  was  myself  the  witness, 
in  1899,  of  his  sang-froid  under  distressing  circum- 
stances. Ibsen  was  descending  a  polished  marble 
staircase  when  his  feet  slipped  and  he  fell  swiftly, 
precipitately,  downward.  He  must  have  injured 
himself  severely,  he  might  have  been  killed,  if  two 
young  gentlemen  had  not  darted  forward  below 
and  caught  him  in  their  arms.  Once  more  set 
the  right  way  up,  Ibsen  softly  thanked  his  saviours 
with  much  frugality  of  phrase — "  Tak,  mine  Herr- 
er!" — tenderly  touched  an  abraded  surface  of 
his  top-hat,  and  marched  forth  homeward,  un- 
perturbed. 

His  silence  had  a  curious  effect  on  those  in 
whose  company  he  feasted;  it  seemed  to  hypno- 
tise them.  The  great  Danish  actress,  Mrs. 
Heiberg,  herself  the  wittiest  of  talkers,  said  that 
to  sit  beside  Ibsen  was  to  peer  into  a  gold-mine 
and  not  catch  a  glitter  from  the  hidden  treasure. 
But  his  dumbness  was  not  so  bitterly  ironical  as 
it  was  popularly  supposed  to  be.  It  came  largely 
from  a  very  strange  passivity  which  made  definite 
action  unwelcome  to  him.  He  could  never  be 
induced  to  pay  visits,  yet  he  would  urge  his  wife 
and  his  son  to  accept  invitations,  and  when  they 
returned  he  would  insist  on  being  told  every  par- 


220  IBSEN 

ticular — who  was  there,  what  was  said,  even  what 
everybody  wore.  He  never  went  to  a  theatre 
or  concert-room,  except  on  the  very  rare  occasions 
when  he  could  be  induced  to  be  present  at  the 
performance  of  his  own  plays.  But  he  was  ex- 
tremely fond  of  hearing  about  the  stage.  He  had 
a  memory  for  little  things  and  an  observation  of 
trifles  which  was  extraordinary.  He  thought  it 
amazing  that  people  could  go  into  a  room  and  not 
notice  the  pattern  of  the  carpet,  the  color  of  the 
curtains,  the  objects  on  the  walls;  these  being  de- 
tails which  he  could  not  help  observing  and  re- 
taining. This  trait  comes  out  in  his  copious  and 
minute  stage  directions. 

Ibsen  was  simplicity  itself;  no  man  was  ever 
less  affected.  But  his  character  was  closed;  he 
was  perpetually  on  the  defensive.  He  was  seldom 
confidential,  he  never  "gave  way";  his  emotions 
and  his  affections  were  genuine,  but  his  heart  was 
a  fenced  city.  He  had  little  sense  of  domestic 
comfort;  his  rooms  were  bare  and  neat,  with  no 
personal  objects  save  those  which  belonged  to 
his  wife.  Even  in  the  days  of  his  wealth,  in  the 
fine  house  on  Drammensvej,  there  was  a  singular 
absence  of  individuality  about  his  dwelling  rooms. 
They  might  have  been  prepared  for  a  rich  Ameri- 
can traveller  in  some  hotel.  Through  a  large 
portion  of  his  career  in  Germany  he  lived  in  fur- 


PERSONAL  CHARACTERISTICS    221 

nished  rooms,  not  because  he  did  not  possess 
furniture  of  his  own,  which  was  stored  up,  but 
because  he  paid  no  sort  of  homage  to  his  own 
penates.  He  had  friends,  but  he  did  not  cultivate 
them;  he  rather  permitted  them,  at  intervals,  to 
cultivate  him.  To  Georg  Brandes  (March  6, 
1870)  he  wrote:  "Friends  are  a  costly  luxury; 
and  when  one  has  devoted  one's  self  wholly  to  a 
profession  and  a  mission  here  in  life,  there  is  no 
place  left  for  friends."  The  very  charming  story 
of  Ibsen's  throwing  his  arms  round  old  Hans 
Christian  Andersen's  neck,  and  forcing  him  to  be 
genial  and  amiable,1  is  not  inconsistent  with  the 
general  rule  of  passivity  and  shyness  which  he 
preserved  in  matters  of  friendship. 

Ibsen's  reading  was  singularly  limited.  In  his 
fine  rooms  on  Drammensvej  I  remember  being 
struck  by  seeing  no  books  at  all,  except  the  large 
Bible  which  always  lay  at  his  side,  and  formed 
his  constant  study.  He  disliked  having  his  parti- 
ality for  the  Bible  commented  on,  and  if,  as  would 
sometimes  be  the  case,  religious  people  expressed 
pleasure  at  finding  him  deep  in  the  sacred  volume, 
Ibsen  would  roughly  reply:  "It  is  only  for  the 
sake  of  the  language."  He  was  the  enemy  of 
anything  which  seemed  to  approach  cant  and 
pretension,  and  he  concealed  his  own  views  as 

1  Samliv  med  Ibsen. 


222  IBSEN 

closely  as  he  desired  to  understand  the  views  of 
others.  He  possessed  very  little  knowledge  of 
literature.  The  French  he  despised  and  repudi- 
ated, although  he  certainly  had  studied  Voltaire 
with  advantage;  of  the  Italians  he  knew  only 
Dante  and  of  the  English  only  Shakespeare,  both 
of  whom  he  had  studied  in  translations.  In 
Danish  he  read  and  reread  Holberg,  who 
throughout  his  life  unquestionably  remained  Ib- 
sen's favorite  author;  he  preserved  a  certain  ad- 
miration for  the  Danish  classics  of  his  youth: 
Heiberg,  Hertz,  Schack-Steffelt.  In  German,  the 
foreign  language  which  he  read  most  currently, 
he  was  strangely  ignorant  of  Schiller  and  Heine, 
and  hostile  to  Goethe,  although  Brand  and  Peer 
Gynt  must  owe  something  of  their  form  to  Faust. 
But  the  German  poets  whom  he  really  enjoyed 
were  two  dramatists  of  the  age  preceding  his  own, 
Otto  Ludwig  (1813-65)  and  Friedrich  Hebbel 
(1813-63).  Each  of  these  playwrights  had  been 
occupied  in  making  certain  reforms,  of  a  realis- 
tic tendency,  in  the  existing  tradition  of  the 
stage,  and  each  of  them  dealt,  before  any  one 
else  in  Europe  did  so,  with  "problems"  on  the 
stage.  These  two  German  poets,  but  Hebbel 
particularly,  passed  from  romanticism  to  real- 
ism, and  so  on  to  mysticism,  in  a  manner  fasci- 
nating to  Ibsen,  whom  it  is  possible  that  they  in- 


PERSONAL  CHARACTERISTICS    223 

fluenced.1  He  remained,  in  later  years,  persist- 
ently ignorant  of  Zola,  and  of  Tolstoi  he  had 
read,  with  contemptuous  disapproval,  only  some  of 
the  polemical  pamphlets.  He  said  to  me,  in  1899, 
of  the  great  Russian:  "Tolstoi? — he  is  mad!" 
with  a  screwing  up  of  the  features  such  as  a  child 
makes  at  the  thought  of  a  black  draught. 

If  he  read  at  all,  it  was  poetry.  His  indifference 
to  music  was  complete;  he  had,  in  fact,  no  ear 
whatever,  and  could  not  distinguish  one  tune 
from  another.  His  efforts  to  appreciate  the  music 
which  Grieg  made  for  Peer  Gynt  were  pathetic. 
But  for  verse  his  sense  was  exceedingly  delicate, 
and  the  sound  of  poetry  gave  him  acute  pleasure. 
At  times,  when  his  nerves  were  overstrained,  he 
was  fatigued  by  the  riot  of  rhymes  which  pursued 
him  through  his  dreams,  and  which  his  memory 
vainly  strove  to  recapture.  For  academic  phi- 
losophy and  systems  of  philosophic  thought  he 
had  a  great  impatience.  The  vexed  question  of 
what  he  owed  to  the  eminent  Danish  philosopher, 
Soren  Kierkegaard,  has  never  been  solved.  Brandes 
has  insisted,  again  and  again,  on  the  close  rela- 
tion between  Brand  and  other  works  of  Ibsen 
and  the  famous  Either-Or  of  Kierkegaard;  "it 

'  It  would  be  interesting  to  compare  Die  Niebelungen,  the  trilogy 
which  Hebbel  published  in  1862,  in  which  the  struggle  between  pagan 
and  Christian  ideals  of  conduct  is  analyzed,  with  Ibsen's  Emperor 
and  Galilean. 


224  IBSEN 

actually  seems,"  he  says,  "as  though  Ibsen  had 
aspired  to  the  honor  of  being  called  Kierke- 
gaard's poet."  Ibsen,  however,  aspired  to  no 
such  honor,  and,  while  he  never  actually  denied 
the  influence,  the  relation  between  him  and  the 
philosopher  seems  to  be  much  rather  one  of  paral- 
lelism than  of  imitation.  Ibsen  was  a  poetical 
psychologist  of  the  first  order,  but  he  could  not 
bring  himself  to  read  the  prose  of  the  professional 
thinkers. 

In  his  attitude  both  to  philosophical  and  po- 
etical literature  Ibsen  is  with  such  apparently 
remote  figures  as  Guy  de  Maupassant  and  Shelley; 
in  his  realism  and  his  mysticism  he  is  unrelated 
to  immediate  predecessors,  and  has  no  wish  to 
be  a  disciple  of  the  dead.  His  extreme  interest 
in  the  observation  of  ethical  problems  is  not 
identified  with  any  curiosity  about  what  philo- 
sophical writers  have  said  on  similar  subjects. 
Weininger  has  pointed  out  that  Ibsen's  philosophy 
is  radically  the  same  as  that  of  Kant,  yet  there 
is  no  evidence  that  Ibsen  had  ever  studied  or  had 
even  turned  over  the  pages  of  the  Criticism  of 
Pure  Reason.  It  is  not  necessary  to  suppose  that 
he  had  done  so.  The  peculiar  aspect  of  the  Ego 
as  the  principal  and  ultimately  sole  guide  to  truth 
was  revealed  anew  to  the  Norwegian  poet,  and 
references  to  Kant,  or  to  Fichte,  or  to  Kierkegaard, 


PERSONAL  CHARACTERISTICS     225 

seem,  therefore,  to  be  beside  the  mark.  The 
watchword  of  Brand,  with  his  cry  of  "All  or  Noth- 
ing," his  absolute  repudiation  of  compromise, 
was  not  a  literary  conception,  but  was  founded, 
without  the  help  of  books,  on  a  profound  con- 
templation of  human  nature,  mainly,  no  doubt, 
as  Ibsen  found  it  in  himself.  But  in  these  days 
of  the  tyranny  of  literature  it  is  curious  to  meet 
with  an  author  of  the  first  rank  who  worked  without 
a  library. 

Ibsen's  study  of  women  was  evidently  so  close, 
and  what  he  writes  about  them  is  usually  so 
penetrating,  that  many  legends  have  naturally 
sprung  up  about  the  manner  in  which  he  gained 
his  experience.  Of  these,  most  are  pure  fiction. 
As  a  matter  of  fact,  Ibsen  was  shy  with  women, 
and  unless  they  took  the  initiative,  he  contented 
himself  with  watching  them  from  a  distance  and 
noting  their  ways  in  silence.  The  early  flirtation 
with  Miss  Rikke  Hoist  at  Bergen,  which  takes  so 
prominent  a  place  in  Ibsen's  story  mainly  because 
such  incidents  were  extremely  rare  in  it,  is  a 
typical  instance.  If  this  young  girl  of  sixteen 
had  not  taken  the  matter  into  her  own  hands, 
running  up  the  steps  of  the  hotel  and  flinging 
her  posy  of  flowers  into  the  face  of  the  young 
poet,  the  incident  would  have  closed  in  his  watch- 
ing her  down  the  street,  while  the  fire  smouldered 


226  IBSEN 

in  his  eyes.  It  was  not  until  her  fresh  field- 
blossoms  had  struck  him  on  the  cheek  that  he 
was  emboldened  to  follow  her  and  to  send  her 
the  lyrical  roses  and  auriculas  which  live  forever 
in  his  poems.  If  we  wish  to  note  the  difference 
of  temperament,  we  have  but  to  contrast  Ibsen's 
affair  with  Rikke  Hoist  with  Goethe's  attitude 
to  Christiana  Vulpius;  in  doing  so,  we  bring  the 
passive  and  the  active  lover  face  to  face. 

Ibsen  would  gladly  have  married  his  flower  of 
the  field,  a  vision  of  whose  bright,  untrammelled 
adolescence  reappears  again  and  again  in  his 
works,  and  plainly  in  The  M aster-Builder.  But 
he  escaped  a  great  danger  in  failing  to  secure  her 
as  his  wife,  for  Rikke  Hoist,  when  she  had  lost  her 
girlish  freshness,  would  probably  have  had  little 
character  and  no  culture  to  fall  back  upon.  He 
waited,  fortunately  for  his  happiness,  until  he 
secured  Susannah  Thoresen.  Mrs.  Ibsen,  his 
faithful  guide,  guardian  and  companion  for  half 
a  century,  will  live  among  the  entirely  successful 
wives  of  difficult  men  of  genius.  In  the  midst  of 
the  spiteful  gossip  of  Christiania  she  had  to 
traverse  her  via  dolorosa,  for  it  was  part  of  the 
fun  of  the  journalists  to  represent  this  husband 
and  wife  as  permanently  alienated.  That  Ibsen 
was  easy  to  live  with  is  not  probable,  but  his  wife 
not  merely  contrived  to  do  it,  but  by  her  watch- 


PERSONAL  CHARACTERISTICS    227 

fulness,  her  adroitness,  and,  when  necessary,  by 
her  firmness  of  decision,  she  smoothed  the  path 
for  the  great  man  whom  she  adored,  and  who 
was  to  her  a  great  wilful  child  to  be  cajoled  and 
circumvented.  He  was  absolutely  dependent  on 
her,  although  he  affected  amusing  airs  of  inde- 
pendence; and  if  she  absented  herself,  there  were 
soon  cries  in  the  house  of  "My  Cat,  My  Cat!" 
the  pet  name  by  which  he  called  his  wife.  Of 
their  domestic  ways  little  is  yet  known  in  detail, 
but  everything  can  be  imagined. 

To  the  enigma  of  Ibsen's  character  it  was  be- 
lieved that  his  private  correspondence  might  sup- 
ply a  key.  His  letters  were  collected  and  ar- 
ranged while  he  was  still  alive,  but  he  was  not 
any  longer  in  a  mental  condition  which  permitted 
him  to  offer  any  help  in  comment  to  his  editors. 
His  son,  Mr.  Sigurd  Ibsen,  superintended  the 
work,  and  two  careful  bibliographers,  Mr.  Halvdan 
Koht  and  Mr.  Julius  Elias,  carried  out  the  scheme 
in  two  volumes,1  with  the  execution  of  which  no 
fault  can  be  suggested.  But  the  enigma  remained 
unsolved;  the  sphinx  spoke  much,  but  failed  to 
answer  the  questions  we  had  been  asking.  These 
letters,  in  the  first  place,  suffer  from  the  fact  that 
Ibsen  was  a  relentless  destroyer  of  documents; 
they  are  all  written  by  him;  not  one  single  example 

i  Breve  jra  Henrik  Ibsen,  Gyldendalske  Boghadel,  1904^ 


228  IBSEN 

had  been  preserved  of  the  correspondence  to  which 
this  is  the  reply.  Then  Ibsen's  letters,  as  re- 
vealers  of  the  unseen  mood,  are  particularly  un- 
satisfactory. With  rare  exceptions,  he  remains 
throughout  them  tightly  buttoned  up  in  his  long 
and  legendary  frock-coat.  There  is  no  laughter 
and  no  tears  in  his  letters;  he  is  occasionally  ex- 
tremely angry,  and  exudes  drops  of  poison,  like 
the  captive  scorpion  which  he  caught  when  he 
was  in  Italy,  and  loved  to  watch  and  tease.  But 
there  is  no  self-abandonment,  and  very  little 
emotion;  the  letters  are  principally  historical  and 
critical,  "finger-posts  for  commentators."  They 
give  valuable  information  about  the  genius  of  his 
works,  but  they  tell  almost  less  about  his  inner 
moral  nature  than  do  his  imaginative  writings. 

In  his  youth  the  scorpion  in  Ibsen's  heart 
seems  to  have  stung  him  occasionally  to  acts  which 
afterwards  filled  him  with  embarrassment.  We 
hear  that  in  his  Bergen  days  he  sent  to  Lading, 
his  fellow-teacher  at  the  theatre,  a  challenge  of 
which,  when  the  mood  was  over,  he  was  greatly 
ashamed.  It  is  said  that  on  another  occasion, 
under  the  pressure  of  annoyance,  maddened  with 
fear  and  insomnia,  he  sprang  out  of  bed  in  his 
shirt  and  tried  to  throw  himself  into  the  sea  off 
one  of  the  quays  in  the  harbor.  Such  perform- 
ances were  futile  and  ridiculous,  and  they  belong 


PERSONAL  CHARACTERISTICS    229 

only  to  his  youth.  It  seems  certain  that  he 
schooled  himself  to  the  suppression  of  such  evi- 
dences of  his  anger,  and  that  he  did  so  largely 
by  shutting  up  within  his  breast  all  the  fire  that 
rose  there.  The  Correspondence — dark  lantern  as 
it  is — seems  to  illuminate  this  condition  of  things; 
we  see  before  us  Ibsen  with  his  hands  clenched, 
his  mouth  tightly  shut,  rigid  with  determination 
not  to  "let  himself  go,"  the  eyes  alone  blazing 
behind  the  gleaming  spectacles. 

An  instance  of  his  suppression  of  personal  feel- 
ing may  be  offered.  The  lengthiest  of  all  Ibsen's 
published  letters  describes  to  Brandes  (April  25, 
1866)  the  suicide,  at  Rome,  of  a  young  Danish 
lawyer,  Ludvig  David,  of  whom  Ibsen  had  seen  a 
good  deal.  The  lad  threw  himself  head-foremost 
out  of  window,  in  a  crisis  of  fever.  Ibsen  writes 
down  all  the  minutest  details  with  feeling  and 
refinement,  but  with  as  little  sympathetic  emotion 
as  if  he  was  drawing  up  a  report  for  the  police. 
With  this  trait  may  be  compared  his  extreme 
interest  in  the  detailed  accounts  of  public  trials; 
he  liked  to  read  exactly  what  the  prisoner  said, 
and  all  the  evidence  of  the  witnesses.  In  this 
Ibsen  resembled  Robert  Browning,  whose  curi- 
osity about  the  small  incidents  surrounding  a  large 
event  was  boundless.  When  Ibsen,  in  the  course 
of  such  an  investigation,  found  the  real  purpose 


230  IBSEN 

of  some  strange  act  dawn  upon  him,  he  exhibited 
an  almost  childish  pleasure;  and  this  was  doubled 
when  the  interpretation  was  one  which  had  not  pre- 
sented itself  to  the  conventional  legal  authorities. 

In  everything  connected  with  the  execution  of 
his  own  work  there  was  no  limit  to  the  pains  which 
he  was  willing  to  take.  His  handwriting  had 
always  been  neat,  but  it  was  commonplace  in  his 
early  years.  The  exquisite  calligraphy  which 
he  ultimately  used  on  every  occasion,  and  the 
beauty  of  which  was  famous  far  and  wide,  he 
adopted  deliberately  when  he  was  in  Rome  in 
1862.  To  the  end  of  his  life,  although  in  the 
latest  years  the  letters  lost,  from  the  shakiness  of 
his  hand,  some  of  their  almost  Chinese  perfection, 
he  wrote  his  smallest  notes  in  this  character. 
His  zeal  for  elaboration  as  an  artist  led  him  to 
collect  a  mass  of  consistent  imaginary  information 
about  the  personages  in  his  plays,  who  became  to 
him  absolutely  real.  It  is  related  how,  some  one 
happening  to  say  that  Nora,  in  A  Doll's  House, 
had  a  curious  name,  Ibsen  immediately  replied, 
"Oh!  her  full  name  was  Leonora;  but  that  was 
shortened  to  Nora  when  she  was  quite  a  little  girl. 
Of  course,  you  know,  she  was  terribly  spoilt  by 
her  parents."  Nothing  of  this  is  revealed  in  the 
play  itself,  but  Ibsen  was  familiar  with  the  past 
history  of  all  the  characters  he  created.  All 


PERSONAL  CHARACTERISTICS    231 

through  his  career  he  seems  to  have  been  long 
haunted  by  the  central  notion  of  his  pieces,  and 
to  have  laid  it  aside,  sometimes  for  many  years, 
until  a  set  of  incidents  spontaneously  crystallized 
around  it.  When  the  medium  in  which  he  was 
going  to  work  became  certain  he  would  put 
himself  through  a  long  course  of  study  in  the 
technical  phraseology  appropriate  to  the  subject. 
No  pains  were  too  great  to  prepare  him  for  the 
final  task. 

When  Mr.  Archer  visited  Ibsen  in  the  Har- 
monien  Hotel  at  Saeby  in  1887  he  extracted 
some  valuable  evidence  from  him  as  to  his  methods 
of  composition:— 

It  seems  that  the  idea  of  a  piece  generally  presents  itself 
before  the  characters  and  incidents,  though,  when  I  put  this 
to  him  flatly,  he  denied  it.  It  seems  to  follow,  however, 
from  his  saying  that  there  is  a  certain  stage  in  the  incubation 
of  a  play  when  it  might  as  easily  turn  into  an  essay  as  into  a 
drama.  He  has  to  incarnate  the  ideas,  as  it  were,  in  char- 
acter and  incident,  before  the  actual  work  of  creation  can 
be  said  to  have  fairly  begun.  Different  plans  and  ideas,  he 
admits,  often  flow  together,  and  the  play  he  ultimately 
produces  is  sometimes  very  unlike  the  intention  with  which 
he  set  out.  He  writes  and  re-writes,  scribbles  and  destroys, 
an  enormous  amount  before  he  makes  the  exquisite  fair 
copy  he  sends  to  Copenhagen. 

He  altered,  as  we  have  said,  the  printed  text 
of  his  earlier  works,  in  order  to  bring  them  into 


232  IBSEN 

harmony  with  his  finished  style,  but  he  did  not 
do  this,  so  far  as  I  remember,  after  the  publication 
of  Brand.  In  the  case  of  all  the  dramas  of  his 
maturity  he  modified  nothing  when  the  work  had 
once  been  given  to  the  world. 


CHAPTER  X 
INTELLECTUAL   CHARACTERISTICS 

HAVING  accustomed  ourselves  to  regard  Ibsen 
as  a  disturbing  and  revolutionizing  force,  which 
met  with  the  utmost  resistance  at  the  outset, 
and  was  gradually  accepted  before  the  close  of 
his  career,  we  may  try  to  define  what  the  nature 
of  his  revolt  was,  and  what  it  was,  precisely,  that 
he  attacked.  It  may  be  roughly  said  that  what 
peculiarly  roused  the  animosity  of  Ibsen  was  the 
character  which  has  become  stereotyped  in  one 
order  of  ideas,  good  in  themselves  but  gradually 
outworn  by  use,  and  which  cannot  admit  ideas  of  a 
new  kind.  Ibsen  meditated  upon  the  obscurant- 
ism of  the  old  regime  until  he  created  figures  like 
Rosmer,  in  whom  the  characteristics  of  that  school 
are  crystallized.  From  the  point  of  view  which 
would  enter  sympathetically  into  the  soul  of 
Ibsen  and  look  out  on  the  world  from  his  eyes, 
there  is  no  one  of  his  plays  more  valuable  in  its 
purely  theoretic  way  than  Rosmersholm.  It  dis- 
sects the  decrepitude  of  ancient  formulas,  it  sur- 
veys the  ruin  of  ancient  faiths.  The  curse  of 


234  IBSEN 

heredity  lies  upon  Rosmer,  who  is  highly  intelligent 
up  to  a  certain  point,  but  who  can  go  no  further. 
Even  if  he  is  persuaded  that  a  new  course  of 
action  would  be  salutary,  he  cannot  move — he  is 
bound  in  invisible  chains.  It  is  useless  to  argue 
with  Rosmer;  his  reason  accepts  the  line  of  logic, 
but  he  simply  cannot,  when  it  comes  to  action, 
cross  the  bridge  where  Beate  threw  herself  into 
the  torrent. 

But  Ibsen  had  not  the  ardor  of  the  fighting 
optimist.  He  was  one  who  "doubted  clouds 
would  break,'-'  who  dreamed,  since  "right  was 
worsted,  wrong  would  triumph."  With  Robert 
Browning  he  had  but  this  one  thing  in  common, 
that  both  were  fighters,  both  "held  we  fall  to 
rise,  are  baffled  to  fight  better,"  but  the  dark 
fatalism  of  the  Norwegian  poet  was  in  other  things 
in  entire  opposition  to  the  sunshiny  hopefulness 
of  the  English  one.  Browning  and  Ibsen  alike 
considered  that  the  race  must  be  reformed  peri- 
odically or  it  would  die.  The  former  anticipated 
reform  as  cheerily  as  the  sower  expects  harvest. 
Ibsen  had  no  such  happy  certainty.  He  was 
convinced  of  the  necessity  of  breaking  up  the  old 
illusions,  the  imaginative  call  for  revolt,  but  his 
faith  wavered  as  to  the  success  of  the  new  move- 
ments. The  old  order,  in  its  resistance  to  all 
change,  is  very  strong.  It  may  be  shaken,  but 


INTELLECTUAL  CHARACTERISTICS  235 

it  is  the  work  of  a  blind  Sampson,  and  no  less,  to 
bring  it  rattling  to  the  ground.  In  Rosmersholm, 
all  the  modern  thought,  all  the  vitality,  all  the  lu- 
cidity belong  to  Rebecca,  but  the  decrepit  for- 
mulas are  stoutly  intrenched.  In  the  end  it  is  not 
the  new  idea  who  conquers;  it  is  the  antique  house, 
with  its  traditions,  its  avenging  vision  of  white 
horses,  which  breaks  the  too-clairvoyant  Rebecca. 
This  doubt  of  the  final  success  of  intelligence, 
this  obstinate  question  whether,  after  all,  as  we 
so  glibly  intimate,  the  old  order  changeth  at  all, 
whether,  on  the  contrary,  it  has  not  become  a 
Juggernaut  car  that  crushes  all  originality  and 
independence  out  of  action,  this  breathes  more  and 
more  plainly  out  of  the  progressing  work  of  Ibsen. 
Hedda  Gabler  condemns  the  old  order,  in  its 
dulness,  its  stifling  mediocrity,  but  she  is  unable  to 
adapt  her  energy  to  any  wholesome  system  of  new 
ideas,  and  she  sinks  into  deeper  moral  dissolution. 
She  hates  all  that  has  been  done,  yet  can  herself 
do  nothing,  and  she  represents,  in  symbol,  that 
detestable  condition  of  spirit  which  cannot  create, 
though  it  sees  the  need  of  creation,  and  can  only 
show  the  irritation  which  its  own  sterility  awakens 
within  it  by  destruction.  All  Hedda  can  actually 
do,  to  assert  her  energy,  is  to  burn  the  MS.  of 
Lovborg,  and  to  kill  herself  with  General  Gabler's 
pistol.  The  race  must  be  reformed  or  die;  the 


236  IBSEN 

Hedda  Gablers  which  adorn  its  latest  phase  do 
best  to  die. 

We  have  seen  that  Ibsen's  theory  was  that  love 
of  self  is  the  fundamental  principle  of  all  activity. 
It  is  the  instinct  of  self-preservation  and  self- 
amelioration  which  leads  to  every  manifestation  of 
revolt  against  stereotyped  formulas  of  conduct. 
Between  the  excessive  ideality  of  Rebecca  and 
the  decadent  sterility  of  Hedda  Gabler  comes 
another  type,  perhaps  more  sympathetic  than 
either,  the  master-builder  Solness.  He,  too,  is 
led  to  condemn  the  old  order,  but  in  the  act  of 
improving  it  he  is  overwhelmed  upon  his  pinnacle, 
and  swoons  to  death,  "dizzy,  lost,  yet  unupbraid- 
ing."  Ibsen's  exact  meaning  in  the  detail  of 
these  symbolic  plays  will  long  be  discussed,  but 
they  repay  the  closest  and  most  reiterated  study. 
Perhaps  the  most  curious  of  all  is  The  Lady  from 
the  Sea,  which  has  been  examined  from  the 
technically  psychological  view  by  a  learned  French 
philosopher,  M.  Jules  de  Gaultier.  For  M.  de 
Gaultier  the  interest  which  attaches  to  Ibsen's 
conception  of  human  life,  with  its  conflicting  in- 
stincts and  responsibilities,  is  more  fully  centred 
in  The  Lady  from  the  Sea  than  in  any  other  of  his 
productions. 

The  theory  of  the  French  writer  is  that  Ibsen's 
constant  aim  is  to  reconcile  and  to  conciliate  the 


INTELLECTUAL  CHARACTERISTICS  237 

two  biological  hypotheses  which  have  divided 
opinion  in  the  nineteenth  century,  and  which 
are  known  respectively  by  the  names  of  Cuvier 
and  Lamarck;  namely,  that  of  the  invariability 
of  species  and  that  of  the  mutability  of  organic 
forms.  In  the  reconciliation  of  these  hypotheses 
Ibsen  finds  the  only  process  which  is  truly  encour- 
aging to  life.  According  to  this  theory,  all  the 
trouble,  all  the  weariness,  all  the  waste  of  moral 
existences  around  us  comes  from  the  neglect  of 
one  or  other  of  these  principles,  and  true  health, 
social  or  individual,  is  impossible  without  the 
harmonious  application  of  them  both.  According 
to  this  view,  the  apotheosis  of  Ibsen's  genius,  or  at 
least  the  most  successful  elucidation  of  his  scheme 
of  ideological  drama,  is  reached  in  the  scene  in 
The  Lady  from  the  Sea  where  Wangel  succeeds  in 
winning  the  heart  of  Ellida  back  from  the  fascina- 
tion of  the  Stranger.  It  is  certainly  in  this  mys- 
terious and  strangely  attractive  play  that  Ibsen 
has  insisted,  more  than  anywhere  else,  on  the  ne- 
cessity of  taking  physiology  into  consideration 
in  every  discussion  of  morals.  He  refers,  like  a 
zoologist,  to  the  laws  which  regulate  the  forma- 
tion and  the  evolution  of  species,  and  the  decision 
of  Ellida,  on  which  so  much  depends,  is  an  amaz- 
ing example  of  the  limitation  of  the  power  of 
change  produced  by  heredity.  The  extraordinary 


238  IBSEN 

ingenuity  of  M.  de  Gaultier's  analysis  of  this 
play  deserves  recognition;  whether  it  can  quite  be 
accepted,  as  embraced  by  Ibsen's  intention,  may 
be  doubtful.  At  the  same  time,  let  us  recollect 
that,  however  subtle  our  refinements  become,  the 
instinct  of  Ibsen  was  probably  subtler  still. 

In  1850,  when  Ibsen  first  crept  forward,  with 
the  glimmering  taper  of  his  Catilina,  there  was 
but  one  person  in  the  world  who  fancied  that 
the  light  might  pass  from  lamp  to  lamp  and  in 
half  a  century  form  an  important  part  of  the  intel- 
lectual illumination  of  Europe.  The  one  person 
who  did  suspect  it  was,  of  course,  Ibsen  himself. 
Against  all  probability  and  common-sense,  this 
apothecary's  assistant,  this  ill-educated  youth 
who  had  just  been  plucked  in  his  preliminary 
examination,  who  positively  was,  and  remained, 
unable  to  pass  the  first  tests  and  become  a  student 
at  the  University,  maintained  in  his  inmost  soul 
the  belief  that  he  was  born  to  be  "a  king  of 
thought."  The  impression  is  perhaps  not  un- 
common among  ill-educated  lads;  what  makes 
the  case  unique,  and  defeats  our  educational 
formulas,  is  that  it  happened  to  be  true.  But 
the  impact  of  Ibsen  with  the  social  order  of  his 
age  was  unlucky,  we  see,  from  the  first;  it  was 
perhaps  more  unlucky  than  that  of  any  other 
great  man  of  the  same  class  with  whose  biography 


INTELLECTUAL  CHARACTERISTICS  239 

we  have  been  made  acquainted.  He  was  at 
daggers  drawn  with  all  that  was  successful  and 
respectable  and  "nice"  from  the  outset  of  his 
career  until  near  the  end  of  it. 

Hence  we  need  not  be  surprised  if  in  the  tone 
of  his  message  to  the  world  there  is  something 
acrimonious,  something  that  tastes  in  the  mouth 
like  aloes.  He  prepared  a  dose  for  a  sick  world, 
and  he  made  it  as  nauseous  and  astringent  as  he 
could,  for  he  was  not  inclined  to  be  one  of  those 
physicians  who  mix  jam  with  their  julep.  There 
was  no  other  writer  of  genius  in  the  nineteenth 
century  who  was  so  bitter  in  dealing  with  human 
frailty  as  Ibsen  was.  By  the  side  of  his  cruel 
clearness  the  satire  of  Carlyle  is  bluster,  the 
diatribes  of  Leopardi  shrill  and  thin.  All  other 
reformers  seem  angry  and  benevolent  by  turns, 
Ibsen  is  uniformly  and  impartially  stern.  That 
he  probed  deeper  into  the  problems  of  life  than 
any  other  modern  dramatist  is  acknowledged, 
but  it  was  his  surgical  calmness  which  enabled 
him  to  do  it.  The  problem-plays  of  Alexandre 
Dumas  fils  flutter  with  emotion,  with  prejudice 
and  pardon.  But  Ibsen,  without  impatience,  ex- 
amines under  his  microscope  all  the  protean  forms 
of  organic  social  life  and  coldly  draws  up  his  diag- 
nosis like  a  report.  We  have  to  think  of  him  as 
thus  ceaselessly  occupied.  We  have  seen  that, 


24o  IBSEN 

long  before  a  sentence  was  written,  he  had  in- 
vented and  studied,  in  its  remotest  branches,  the 
life-history  of  the  characters  who  were  to  move  in 
his  play.  Nothing  was  unknown  to  him  of  their 
experience,  and  for  nearly  two  years,  like  a  coral- 
insect,  he  was  building  up  the  scheme  of  them 
in  silence.  Odd  little  objects,  fetiches  which 
represented  people  to  him,  stood  arranged  on 
his  writing  table,  and  were  never  to  be  touched. 
He  gazed  at  them  until,  as  if  by  some  feat  of  black 
magic,  he  turned  them  into  living  persons,  typical 
and  yet  individual. 

We  have  recorded  that  the  actual  writing  down 
of  the  dialogue  was  often  swift  and  easy,  when  the 
period  of  incubation  was  complete.  Each  of 
Ibsen's  plays  presupposes  a  long  history  behind  it; 
each  starts  like  an  ancient  Greek  tragedy,  in  the 
full  process  of  catastrophe.  This  method  of  com- 
position was  extraordinary,  was  perhaps,  in  mod- 
ern times,  unparalleled.  It  accounted  in  measure 
for  the  coherency,  the  inevitability,  of  all  the  de- 
tail, but  it  also  accounted  for  some  of  the  difficulties 
which  meet  us  in  the  task  of  interpretation. 
Ibsen  calls  for  an  expositor,  and  will  doubtless 
give  occupation  to  an  endless  series  of  scholiasts. 
They  will  not  easily  exhaust  their  theme,  and  to 
the  last  something  will  escape,  something  will  defy 
their  most  careful  examination.  It  is  not  disre- 


INTELLECTUAL  CHARACTERISTICS  241 

spectful  to  his  memory  to  claim  that  Ibsen  some- 
times packed  his  stuff  too  closely.  Criticism, 
when  it  marvels  most  at  the  wonder  of  his  genius, 
is  constrained  to  believe  that  he  sometimes  threw 
too  much  of  his  soul  into  his  composition,  that  he 
did  not  stand  far  enough  away  from  it  always  to 
command  its  general  effect.  The  result,  especially 
in  the  later  symbolical  plays,  is  too  vibratory,  and 
excites  the  spectator  too  much. 

One  very  curious  example  of  Ibsen's  minute 
care  is  found  in  the  copiousness  of  his  stage  di- 
rections. Later  playwrights  have  imitated  him 
in  this,  and  we  have  grown  used  to  it;  but  thirty 
years  ago  such  minuteness  seemed  extravagant 
and  needless.  As  a  fact,  it  was  essential  to  the 
absolutely  complete  image  which  Ibsen  desired 
to  produce.  The  stage  directions  in  his  plays 
cannot  be  "skipped"  by  any  reader  who  desires 
to  follow  the  dramatist's  thought  step  by  step 
without  losing  the  least  link.  These  notes  of  his 
intention  will  be  of  ever-increasing  value  as  the 
recollection  of  his  personal  wishes  is  lost.  In 
1899  Ibsen  remarked  to  me  that  it  was  almost 
useless  for  actors  nowadays  to  try  to  perform 
the  comedies  of  Holberg,  because  there  were  no 
stage  directions  and  the  tradition  was  lost.  Of 
his  own  work,  fortunately,  that  can  never  be  said. 
Dr.  Verrall,  in  his  brilliant  and  penetrating  studies 


242  IBSEN 

of  the  Greek  Tragecfies,  has  pointed  out  more 
than  once  the  "  undesigned  and  unforeseen  defect 
with  which,  in  studying  ancient  drama,  we  must 
perpetually  reckon,"  namely,  the  loss  of  the  action 
and  of  the  equivalent  stage  directions.  It  is  easy 
to  imagine  "what  problems  Shakespeare  would 
present  if  he  were  printed  like  the  Poetce  Scenlci 
Greed"  and  not  more  difficult  to  realize  how  many 
things  there  would  be  to  puzzle  us  in  Ghosts  and 
The  Wild  Duck  if  we  possessed  nothing  but  the 
bare  text. 

The  body  of  work  so  carefully  conceived,  so 
long  maintained,  so  passionately  executed,  was 
far  too  disturbing  in  its  character  to  be  welcome 
at  first.  In  the  early  eighties  the  name  of  Ibsen 
was  loathed  in  Norway,  and  the  attacks  on  him 
which  filled  the  press  were  often  of  an  extrava- 
gant character.  At  the  present  moment  any 
one  conversant  with  Norwegian  society  who  will 
ask  a  priest  or  a  schoolmaster,  an  officer  or  a 
doctor,  what  has  been  the  effect  of  Ibsen's  in- 
fluence, will  be  surprised  at  the  unanimity  of  the 
reply.  Opinions  may  differ  as  to  the  attractive- 
ness of  the  poet's  art  or  of  its  skill,  but  there  is  an 
almost  universal  admission  of  its  beneficial  ten- 
dency. Scarcely  will  a  voice  be  found  to  demur 
to  the  statement  that  Ibsen  let  fresh  air  and  light 
into  the  national  life,  that  he  roughly  but  thor- 


INTELLECTUAL  CHARACTERISTICS  243 

oughly  awakened  the  national  conscience,  that 
even  works  like  Ghosts,  which  shocked,  and  works 
like  Rosmersholm,  which  insulted  the  prejudices 
of  his  countrymen,  were  excellent  in  their  result. 
The  conquest  of  Norway  by  this  dramatist,  who 
reviled  and  attacked  and  abandoned  his  native 
land,  who  railed  at  every  national  habit  and 
showed  a  worm  at  the  root  of  every  national  tra- 
dition, is  amazing.  The  fierce  old  man  lived 
long  enough  to  be  accompanied  to  his  grave  "to 
the  noise  of  the  mourning  of  a  nation,"  and  he 
who  had  almost  starved  in  exile  to  be  conducted 
to  the  last  resting-place  by  a  Parliament  and  a 
King. 

It  must  always  be  borne  in  mind  that,  although 
Ibsen's  appeal  is  to  the  whole  world — his  deter- 
mination to  use  prose  aiding  him  vastly  in  this 
dissemination — yet  it  is  to  Norway  that  he  belongs, 
and  it  is  at  home  that  he  is  best  understoood.  No 
matter  how  acrid  his  tone,  no  matter  how  hard 
and  savage  the  voice  with  which  he  prophesied, 
the  accord  between  his  country  and  himself  was 
complete  long  before  the  prophet  died.  As  he 
walked  about,  the  strange,  picturesque  little  old 
man,  in  the  streets  of  Christiania,  his  fellow- 
citizens  gazed  at  him  with  a  little  fear,  but  with 
some  affection  and  with  unbounded  reverence. 
They  understood  at  last  what  the  meaning  of  his 


244  IBSEN 

message  had  been,  and  how  closely  it  applied  to 
themselves,  and  how  much  the  richer  and  healthier 
for  it  their  civic  atmosphere  had  become.  They 
would  say,  as  the  soul  of  Dante  said  in  the  New 
Life:— 

e  costui 

Che  viene  a  consolar  la  nostra  mente, 
Ed  e  la  sua  virtdi  tanto  possente, 
Ch'altro  pensier  non  lascia  star  con  nui. 

No  words,  surely,  could  better  express  the  inten- 
sity with  which  Ibsen  had  pressed  his  moral 
quality,  his  virtu,  upon  the  Norwegian  conscience, 
not  halting  in  his  pursuit  till  he  had  captured  it 
and  had  banished  from  it  all  other  ideals  of  con- 
duct. No  one  who  knows  will  doubt  that  the 
recent  events  in  which  Norway  has  taken  so 
chivalric,  and  at  the  same  time  so  winning  and 
gracious,  an  attitude  in  the  eyes  of  the  world,  owe 
not  a  little  to  their  being  the  work  of  a  generation 
nurtured  in  that  new  temper  of  mind,  that  spiritel 
nuovo  d'amore  which  was  inculcated  by  the  whole 
work  of  Ibsen. 


AUG  02  1985 


DATE  DUE 


JUN  1  b 

1987 

IllNl 

3W 

Ovlli  a 

nrn  •  n 

llAi    f\   t      1Q 

R7 

RIG  u  : 

UN  2  1  w 

Of 

GAYLORO 

PBtNTED  IN  U    S    » 

3   1970  00585   1446 


UC  SOUTHERN  REGIONAL  LIBRARY  FAdU 


A     000  649  426     4 


